
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 16, 1992                   TAG: 9203160174
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PUBLIC BROADCASTING AND ARTS UNDER FIRE

IN MOST WAYS, it's business as usual in Washington: The government dithers while deficits mount, the cities crumble, health-care costs climb, and special-interest money pours into the campaign coffers of our nation's leaders. Another day at the office.

In at least one way, it's different. An election looms, so Congress and the White House are looking for the moral high ground. Among issues on which they've jockeyed for position is funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting.

As always in such matters, there are less visible agendas. Morality had nothing to do with President Bush's recent firing of NEA head John Frohnmayer, for instance. It was a sop to conservatives, ired (by Pat Buchanan, among others) that taxpayer money was supporting art they consider obscene. Some people would consider Bush's act craven and unprincipled.

Senate Republicans, meantime, have been upset since last fall that NPR reporter Nina Totenberg aired information from an unidentified source about Anita Hill's sexual-harassment charges against Clarence Thomas. Buchanan and Jesse Helms, the senator from North Carolina, have lambasted public television about a documentary on black homosexuals. Western ranchers got their dander up over a PBS special, "The New Range Wars."

Such high-horse riding notwithstanding, there is something to the insight that beauty, obscenity and a host of other things are in the eye of the beholder. Almost anything written, said, broadcast, painted or sculpted will offend somebody. If a democracy chooses to support creation and/or dissemination of art and information with tax dollars, it must expect controversy. If there is none, the public may be getting insipid pap, not its money's worth.

A legitimate issue is whether any tax money at all should be spent in this way. We think it should. One may prefer a particular artist or work over another, but promotion of the arts is, generally, a good thing for society; and certainly, not a lot of public money goes into it.

As for public radio and TV, these were set up by Congress to provide a range of topics and programming not available from mass-oriented commercial stations. The public broadcasters have done what was expected of them.

If anything, their offerings are more likely to reflect an establishment view than any raving radical's. (Notice how many of the programming supporters are large corporations, how many Masterpiece Theater shows glorify the age of British empire and aristocracy.) The public morality's not being undermined by these outlays.

If anything, it's Helms and Buchanan - not the public broadcasters - who seek to impose a narrow agenda. By pandering to fear and prejudice, Helms wants to anoint himself the nation's censor and moral arbiter. There is something scary or humorous about that, depending on how you look at it.

But there is nothing righteous in the PBS,NEA,NPR-bashing. It is a smear campaign, ugly and without socially redeeming value. It's also a distraction from far more pressing public business.

by CNB