PBS : Behind the Screen

By Laurence Jarvik

Book Overview

PBS originataed with good intentions: Making the world better through education. But according to media analyst Laurence Jarvik, America's only taxpayer-supported public broadcasting network has gone astray. " ... must reading for anyone who is interested in how the public broadcasting system was created, what it achieved, and where it has gone wrong." - David Horowitz In his new book,PBS: Behind the Screen,Jarvik provides the first independent, historical account of our nation's television network. Based on years of research and scores of interviews, he tours readers through PBS's evolution, from the early days, when the network was a shining vision in the minds of educators and philanthropists, to later years, when it became the focal point of a never-ending, sometimes ugly tug-of-war between opposing political camps. PBS: Behind the Screenanswers the following questions: Does Sesame Street really educate? What political agenda underlies PBS's hard-hitting documentary programs? Is the real Bill Moyers the carefully crafted image viewers see on the screen? What challenges did William F. Buckley Jr. have to overcome before Firing Line could be broadcast? Just how much did America's favorite chef, Julia Child, really know about cooking when she started out?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761506683
• ISBN13: 9780761506683
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Information the public should know

Tightly written, well researched and chock full of surprising anecodtes--some amusing, some which make you wonder why the country puts up with this. Bill Moyers refused to be interviewed for the book. That typifies the mindset at the top of PBS (others did agree to an interview. Kudos to them). This book is not a hit piece on liberalism. It is not all negative. It is the history, a rather detailed history, of the ups and downs of public broadcasting in America. The chapter on fundraising alone is worth the purchase price.

Thorough Research in Exposing People Taking Advantage of the System

This book adds to the growing body of evidence that seeing is not believing when it comes to the media. PBS is not what it seems to be. In graduate school, it's odd that none of the information Dr. Jarvik presents in his book was in any of the readings or class discussions. The tone of the book is not alarmist, rather it is analytical. He simply presents factual data. Even the foreword by Van Gordon Sauter (former president of CBS news) is written in the same objective, journalistic style. Just to illustrate the point, consider this tidbit early on. Fred Friendly, well-known "scholar, thinker, media fixture, et cetera," was both a mover and shaker in academe and broadcasting. However, I did not know until reading Jarvik's book that "Professor Friendly" . . . "never graduated from college yet ended up a professor at Columbia University." Jarvik shows how the convoluted system of public broadcast created a level of bureaucrats who wound up being accountable to no one, all the while taking taxpayer dollars to accumlate large streams of personal income. A significant amount of the people receiving the greatest benefit are from England! Jarvik quotes former PBS president Larry Grossman as saying it was "a system no one in the outside world understands or can penetrate." Filled with contradictions, lack of accountability, and competing agendas, a select few grew very wealthy in that system. The band plays on, the "pledge drives" keep airing, and new suckers are born every minute. P. T. Barnum is validated again.

The only thing bad about this book is it's not longer.

For those interested in truth, this book is a page-turner. For those who cringe when brought up short by truths that spoils their pet lies, this book is a "groaner" (as I noticed in some of the reviews on this site). Desperate to discredit this book, and resorting to lies, one reviewer wrote that the author of this book bashes Julia Child. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book begins with a fascinating in-depth look at the origins of PBS, dating all the way back to 1919. Therein we learn that the child called "PBS" seems to not have a single politcally conservative ancestor. She is the offspring of leftists, who used a Trojan Horse called "education" to lure the federal govenment into authorizing and funding public broadcasting. Then once inside the gate of the American home, she pulled out her weapon of leftist leaning "public policy" programming on everything from FDR's "New Deal", to the HIV virus. She also brandished her weapon of money-making machines such as "Sesame Street". Offered up ostensibly to help disadvantaged inner-city children, after 30 years of production the "Sesame Street" producers cannot point to a single academic study which proves she has succeeded. But that show makes money (billions of dollars over the years) for it's producers, though not one penny for the federal government. And it was the federal government that bankrolled it's creation. Learn how many of the shows you've seen and HAVE enjoyed on PBS were opposed by PBS executives and only got on the air because of intense pressure, or because certain producers bypassed PBS and went direct to the local PBS affiliates. (Virtually every comedy you've ever seen on PBS, to this day, is purchased locally without official PBS sanction or approval. Leftist don't want us enjoying ourselves. Instead we're supposed to submit to their brainwashing on social issues.) This, and much more. Read this book. You owe it to yourself to know the truth.

A cerebral blow to PBS' credibility.

PUBLIC TELEVISION EXPOSED © ABIP 1997 by Agustín Blázquez with the collaboration of Jaums SuttonFor taxpayers and donors of public television, Laurence Jarvik's PBS BEHIND THE SCREEN is a must. Deals, manipulations, intrigues, dirty tricks, betrayals, censorship and political bias at PBS are exposed in this book. As the secrets unfold, we begin to realize that PBS is not serving the best interests of the people who are dutifully paying its tab, and in many instances works against them.This needed, serious, informative, matter of fact, easy to read and enlightening book provides a wealth of information otherwise not easily available. Jarvik does an admirable job putting it all together: from the Foreword by the former president of CBS News, Van Gordon Sauter, through Jarvik's introduction and thirteen chapters presenting the history of public television from Edward R. Murrow to THIS OLD HOUSE, including the telling case of Nobel Prize-winning ec onomist Milton Friedman's 1980 FREE TO CHOOSE, rebutting John Kenneth Galbraith's 1977 AGE OF UNCERTAINTY.Jarvik exposes PBS' largely unknown, huge money making venues licensing videos, books, toys, games and other products - some of which are manufactured in China and other Asian countries notorious for their exploitive labor practices, including child labor - from its shows for children: SESAME STREET, BARNEY and MISTER ROGERS. Sufficient money to render PBS independent from government and individual support.In spite of huge profits, PBS begs shamelessly for subsidies and donations while their executives, directors and producers - making six figure salaries - have side businesses and become multi-millionaires at the expense of the uninformed. Jarvik points out that "SESAME STREET serves as an infomercial for the 5,000-plus licensed SESAME STREET products that gross over $800 million in retail sales around the world each year." This kind of eye-opening information is important and necessary. After reading it, close your donor wallet until PBS comes clean.The chapter on that colorful Bill Moyers is certainly worth the price of admission. I won't say more here. I don't want to spoil the fun.It is imperative that the PBS's public understand the political struggle behind THE MACNEIL/LEHRER NEWS HOUR as well as the history of bias and inaccuracies of FRONTLINE, NOVA, THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE's controversial episode "Liberators," and the ongoing PBS trials against conservative thought "ending" with the advent - as an act of tokenism - of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s FIRING LINE. In the fascinating chapter on Buckley, Jarvik says, "Typical of the way PBS treats conservatives is the case of Reed Irvine's response to WGBH's thirteen-hour series VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY (1983), which he believed was filled with 'inaccuracies, a lot of errors, and distortions'."Mr. Irvine, AIM's Chairman, asked for a chance to offer a rebuttal documentary on PBS. In contrast wi

The only systematic conservative critique of PBS

Within the media culture, public broadcasting is often portrayed as the noblest of charities, not unlike the public libraries, a nonprofit resource for an enlightened citizenry. Almost all of the books written about PBS have been authored by the architects, producers, stars, and toadies of the system. PBS: Behind the Screen is the only systematic conservative critique of PBS. The endemic liberal bias is documented, but so are other critiques that Jarvik alone has added to the conservative case, especially the devolution of a supposedly noncommercial system into a profit center for the politically connected. (If a public library stocked its nonfiction shelves only with left-wing tracts, or enriched its librarians with special deals, it too might be as controversial as PBS.) Rather than construct an Upton Sinclair-style muckraker's jeremiad of the system, Jarvik investigates the creation and content of individual PBS series to draw a more nuanced picture of PBS operations. A must read for anyone wanting the full story of American public broadcasting