Public media’s power to educate generations and inform citizens is diminishing in an ever-more-digitized landscape that amplifies junk and misinformation, and queues up creepy kid-show knockoffs instead of quality programming.
Rather than let public broadcasters who have accrued so much public trust languish or, worse, be co-opted by a tech industry that has a vast interest in how its portrayed, governments need to play a more active role in public media’s health and digital future.
A billion-dollar federal funding infusion to upgrade public media would be a start, perhaps paid for by a “journalism tax” on the largest tech platforms, as has been proposed in Britain.