I literally have not watched the PBS News Hour for at least 20 years. That was the time when Republicans had cut off most of the public funding and implanted their own far right CEO to “straighten things out” at what had previously been a more-or-less respectable organization.
At that time, the News Hour was run by two old white guys (Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer) who treated America to a nightly parade of old white guys from the largest corporations, lobbying groups, or retired military. It was the rare exception when this program ever gave any significant time to people who were not from a far-right military/mega-corporation point of view.
I eventually concluded the News Hour was more damaging to America than even Fox News because the News Hour enjoyed a halo of respectability owing to Nova, Masterpiece and other fine programming. I mean, everybody knows Fox News is pure propaganda. But people assume PBS is more objective in their reporting. I found that assumption to be entirely false. So I stopped watching 20 years ago.
Several weeks ago, I commented on the past state of PBS. One of the other commenters suggested that my opinion was out of date and that things were really different now. So I made a note to give the PBS News Hour another chance. That chance was this evening. I blocked out the entire hour to give them a fair hearing. I even set an alarm to make sure I didn't miss any of it. Here’s what I saw:
Opening Roll
The first thing I saw was a local promo (probably a PSA, unpaid) for a charter school. Not a very encouraging sign when the opening seconds are a direct attack on our public schools.
Then the list of sponsors: Raymond James, Consumer Cellular, Johnson & Johnson, and Fidelity. OK, I know that they need money to produce the programming, and at least they are honest about who is paying the piper.
Then they listed about 20 well-known national foundations. Again, no real objection here IF the programming is worthy. But if it is still just a megaphone for the biggest corporations and the military, I don’t like seeing foundation money going that direction when there are so many worthy charities deserving of support.
The Preview
They listed the stories of the evening, which would mainly be the gasoline prices (given the alarmist title “Pain at the Pump”), something about the Charlottesville verdict, and something about vaccinating kids.
OK. Fair enough. Maybe this wouldn’t be my list of the most important issues facing the nation, but a reasonable list, notwithstanding the “hair on fire” title for the first story.
On to the meat of the program …
Be outraged, gas prices are killing people, life is horrible, Biden did it
I expected there might be some education about what moves gas prices and some historical context about past movements. I expected there might be some economists or industry experts that could give some real insights into how the rapid recovery of the economy and the mothballing of some refinery capacity was fundamental to what we see at the pump today.
No, there was none of that. Not one word. They started with some old footage of the OPEC crisis as if this was somehow like 1977. I thought that was really strange because today’s situation is nothing like 1977. But then they followed with some idiot named McNally who had an energy position under the Cheney/Bush Presidency and is now apparently a lobbyist for the oil industry. He talked for 4 minutes and the only real point he made was that the only possible solution to this “crisis” is to go kiss Saudi ass to beg them to pump more oil.
By now, I was getting rather irritated and we were only 5 minutes into the hour. But I decided to hang in there to hear what the other guests had to say on the subject.
But there were no other guests. That was it. That was the only person interviewed — an oil lobbyist who wants us to talk Saudi Arabia into pumping more oil.
- There was not one word about the fact that today's gas prices are only about 35 cents (adjusted for inflation) above where they were two years ago at the start of the pandemic
- Not one word about the fact that today’s prices are about 80 cents (adjusted for inflation) lower than they were 10 years ago.
- Not a single word about how much more efficient cars are in the past 10 years, so people are spending less for fuel now than they have in decades.
- Not one word from any expert about the real factors causing this spike and how long it will likely take for the supply chain to correct itself, just as is happening in all other segments of the economy.
- Not one word about the importance of the items in the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the BBB bill to aggressively expand renewable energy and electrify our transportation system.
- Literally, not a single word about any of these things.
Frankly, I was dumbfounded. Somehow this program had found a way to become WORSE than I remembered it 20 years ago — an impossibly low bar. I turned it off after only 6 minutes — 6 minutes of my life I will never get back. So long PBS. Maybe I’ll smell you again in 2041 if you and I are both still here.
It really is tragic. This never should have happened to PBS.