Made Possible by...: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States.

Made Possible By...: The Death of Public Broadcasting the United States by James Ledbetter Verso. 280 pages. $25.00.

These days, it's hard to say the words "public broadcasting" with a straight face. Corporate logos and de facto commercials--steadily more blatant--symbolize what has become of dreams that the airwaves could serve the the public interest.

James Ledbetter's book chronicles how we got into this grim situation. While doing an autopsy on "the death of public broadcasting," he urges us to revive the corpse. "This volume is written with the belief that public broadcasting has provided many moments of unique brilliance, and in the hope--admittedly dim--that it will continue to do so," he writes.

Some dreams die hard.

The revival Ledbetter has in mind should not be confused with the resurrection now under way. "Republicans have virtually abandoned their attempts to end the federal financing of public radio and television or cut it back sharply," The New York Times reported a few weeks before the close of 1997. "In fact, after a public-relations and letter-writing campaign by the broadcasters, both houses of Congress have voted to increase the amount of federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to $300 million in the year 2000, an increase of $50 million over 1999."

Such resilience is a hollow victory for today's shell of public broadcasting. "PBS and NPR programming is moving further and further from the goals laid out by its founders," Ledbetter argues. And the book presents plenty of evidence to back up his claim that "public broadcasters have spent the last decade rushing as hard as they can to merge their services with those offered by commercial networks."

The Carnegie Commission launched public broadcasting in earnest with a high-profile 1967 report, "Public Television: A Program for Action." Scenarios were hopeful--even starry-eyed--when Carnegie's prestigious panel declared that public TV "should provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard."

Ledbetter illuminates how Washington politicians and "underwriting" corporations squeezed the life out of public broadcasting, which has become just another product of the political economy. Carnegie's blue-ribbon theoreticians could proclaim that, as Ledbetter puts it, "public broadcasting had to be insulated from commercial forces in order to achieve its ideals." But those forces have proven relentless: "While the visionaries behind public broadcasting believed that changing the medium of television would change the country, they never fully grasped that the medium itself could not change against the wishes of the society's most powerful elements--the federal government, the military, and large corporations."

Ledbetter cites Richard Nixon's heavy-handed moves to slash federal funding in retaliation for "liberal" documentaries. During the next decade, President Reagan appointed far-right ideologues to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board--which, Ledbetter reports, "has been used over the years as a dumping ground for the worst sort of political hacks."

For a long time, federal subsidies through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting came under fierce attack from conservative politicians and rightwing media watchdogs intent on suffocating the last flames of independence at outlets like the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. But many on the left have grown critical themselves. When Newt Gingrich and Company tried to eliminate federal funding in 1995, as Ledbetter notes, "most of the liberal left ... declined to rally a defense for public broadcasting."

Made Possible By ... hits its stride with a chapter called "Underwriting Politics." Ledbetter is devastating as he assesses the flood of corporate money into PBS. "Underwriting provides a unique marketing opportunity, saturating the presumably upscale public-broadcasting audience with the underwriter's product or service.... The underwriter purchases an image of prestige and civic-mindedness by being associated with the `good cause,' or the content of public broadcasting--the donation is a form of reputation laundering."

Other types of dividends also flow from underwriting. The agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, a longtime funder now pumping $6.3 million a year into The News-Hour With Jim Lehrer on PBS, has gotten a high return on its investment.

In a section titled "Buying Silence," Ledbetter adeptly exposes how ADM, facing a serious scandal in 1995, got off easy on the News-Hour: "Not until October 1996--when ADM was hit with a $100 million criminal penalty for price-fixing, seven times the amount of the next-highest such penalty--did the News Hour devote a full segment to this scofflaw corporation." For many months before then, despite damning revelations and extensive coverage of the ADM scandal by many other mainstream outlets, the News-Hour had dodged the story. In effect, Ledbetter says, "ADM could not bribe the News-Hour into ignoring the ADM scandal altogether, but its underwriting serves to narrow and contain the parameters of discussion on public television."

Such conflicts of interest are routine. Ledbetter recalls that in 1995 the News-Hour echoed Congressional debates when it "held in-depth discussions about proposed cutbacks in education, aid to the poor, and medical subsidies. But corporate welfare--without which ADM, the News-Hour's chief private contributor, could hardly exist--was never discussed."

Ledbetter contends that corporate funding serves a larger, distorting purpose. "The underwriting process is an investment in a forum that theoretically represents the many so that it will reflect the views of a wealth-and-power elite.... Public-broadcasting contributions can thus be seen as part of a broader corporate communications strategy, through which American-based multinationals help shift public debate away from their own malfeasance."

When he takes up noncommercial radio, Ledbetter reaches similar conclusions, alleging "a capitulation of public radio to the established views of private lobbyists." Along the way, he supplies examples of how National Public Radio's weekday All Things Considered and Morning Edition programs have moved into the corporate embrace. Occasional islands of quality journalism are swamped by oceans of reliance on official sources, corporate-backed experts, and conventional media wisdom.

To enhance its coverage as Congress considered health-care reform in 1993 and 1994, for instance, Morning Edition regularly featured a debate between two former Congressmen, Tom Downey and Vin Weber. "Because one was a Democrat and one a Republican," writes Ledbetter, "the discussions were presumed to be `balanced.' NPR failed, however, to tell listeners that both men professionally opposed the Clinton health plan, since both were paid lobbyists for various health insurers!"

While Ledbetter is suitably tough on public radio in general and NPR in particular, it's unfortunate that only one chapter focuses on public radio. NPR news programs are influential and widely heard. Given the importance of NPR and its equally compromised rival Public Radio International, the book's two-dozen pages devoted to public radio--while solid--are insufficient.

Right now, almost every trend in public TV and radio is moving in the wrong direction. The only hope is for the public to organize and put up a fight.

Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist on media and politics. His most recent books are "Wizards of Media Oz" (co-authored with Jeff Cohen) and "The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh."