The Nation June 13-20, 1997
PBS Strikes Labor
Public television added another episode of timidity to its history this spring
when the Public Broadcasting Service rejected a documentary because it had
received funding from unions. Out at Work, directed by Kelly Anderson and
Tami Gold, documents the workplace experiences of two gay men and a
lesbian after their employers and co-workers found out they were gay. The
woman was fired by the infamous Cracker Barrel; one of the men, a Detroit
auto worker, was harassed and threatened by his co-workers; the other, a
Bronx librarian, fought for health benefits for his lover with AIDS.
Lisa Heller, executive producer of the public TV series P.O.V., had said she
was "seriously considering" putting the film on her schedule, and thus it was
submitted to PBS headquarters for routine review. Sandra Heberer, PBS's
director of news and information programming, acknowledged to Heller in a
letter that the documentary was "compelling television responsibly done on a
significant issue of our times."
The network claimed, however, that its "guidelines prohibit funding that might
lead to an assumption that individual underwriters might have exercised
editorial control over program content...even if, as is clear in this case, those
underwriters did not."
At first glance, the rejection appeared to be a way to dodge a gay-themed
program, as with PBS's queasiness about funding a sequel to Armistead
Maupin's popular Tales of the City. But Heller, who said she was
"disappointed" with the PBS rejection, insisted that P.O.V. has "a good track
record" in getting gay-themed films approved for PBS distribution.
The problem, then, is with the documentary's funders. Nine labor unions and
the Astraea National Lesbian Action Foundation, among others, backed the
documentary, some with contributions as low as $500. Harry Forbes, a PBS
publicist, explained that because the underwriters "were all sort of labor-
oriented," it created a possible perception of conflict of interest.
Of course, public television is overflowing with regular programming, specials
and documentaries that are funded by corporate-oriented organizations of all
sorts. Critics have long railed over PBS-accepted documentaries like The Man
Millions Read, a hagiography of New York Times columnist James Reston
that was partly funded by the Times and directed by a member of the
Sulzberger family, which owns a controlling interest in the paper. Other
examples include a 1991 special on the American diet that was partly
underwritten by Nestlé and The Machine That Changed the World, a 1992
documentary that was funded in part with a $1.9 million grant from computer
manufacturer Unisys.
Why didn't the "perception of conflict of interest" kill these programs? A PBS
official explained that the Times was a producer rather than an underwriter of
its program, though he doubted that labor unions would be allowed to produce
a PBS program. Asked if the Out at Work rejection meant that labor unions
could never fund a PBS-distributed documentary about workplace issues,
Forbes said, "I think that's probably true."
This labor lockout is astonishing not only because it denies viewers a full
debate but because it obliterates the lead role unions have played in the history
of public broadcasting. There would never have been a portion of the broadcast
spectrum reserved for educational purposes without the labor activism of the
twenties and thirties. When he was vice president of the United Auto Workers,
Leonard Woodcock served on the Carnegie Commission that wrote the
blueprint for the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, and $25,000 from the
U.A.W. and $100,000 from the Communications Workers of America helped
get the Corporation for Public Broadcasting started in the late sixties.
Now, however, public television's largest distributor says union money is
verboten, unless it pays for programming in which unions have no interest. The
antilabor standard will no doubt be popular among the commercial sponsors
PBS is flirting with. Whether it runs ads or not (outgoing F.C.C. chairman
Reed Hundt has come out against the proposition), the public television
system, which was founded out of frustration with commercial television's
limitations, is now sadly more limited than commercial television. Just ask
filmmakers Gold and Anderson; they're repackaging Out at Work to be shown
on HBO.
James Ledbetter
James Ledbetter, a staff writer at The Village Voice, is the author of Made
Possible By...: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States (Verso),
which will be published this fall.
