THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 3, 1995 TAG: 9504030047
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
In a gathering last week, more rarefied than those to which I usually drift, a discussion turned to efforts to phase out government support of public broadcasting.
It is a target of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. Many conservatives, especially those in far right field, assert that the Public Broadcasting Service betrays a liberal bias. That just isn't so.
The likes of the ``MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour'' and ``Washington Week in Review'' are among the few places on the dial free of any virus of bias.
They typify public broadcasting. In exploring issues, it strives to be as antiseptic as an operating room.
That was the consensus among the group touching the topic last week when a young corporate executive made a clarifying remark.
Those hostile to public broadcasting believe genuinely that their views are the only true, objective ones on an issue, she said.
They do not recognize there is merit in ideas opposing theirs or that there is even another side.
Well, I felt like clapping and bursting into song, shouting, with Henry Higgins: ``BY GEORGE, SHE'S GOT IT!''
The joy of the MacNeil/Lehrer laboratory is that in probing any issue they pit authorities from both sides, or the several sides, in what amounts to civilized debate.
More often than not, a viewer will start listening, leaning to one side or the other; but as the program advances, he or she begins to realize that the problem under inspection is extremely complex.
It is impossible to detect from the expressions on the faces of Lehrer or MacNeil, or in their questions, whether either finds one view more valid than another.
Their habitual approach is one of earnest concern for discovering the truth. And when four or more experts contend, you can almost see the clash of ideas.
I urge friends, especially young ones, not to miss MacNeil/Lehrer. If you have time for only one show on TV, choose those two polite inquisitors on WHRO-TV, I beg.
To watch that pair's gentle, persistent interrogations is the best way to trace issues from the moment they hove on the horizon to their journey's end.
A young mother called the other day to declare that she would be lost without WHRO-TV.
She knows, she said, that when she parks her youngsters before the screen as she cleans house that they will receive instruction and entertainment from skilled, gifted, conscientious creators. ``I couldn't do without them,'' she said.
She is confident of their taste in guiding young minds, she said.
In a speech to the Senate, Sen. Charles S. Robb noted, ``We invest very little and we get a lot in return.'' Only 14 percent of public broadcasting's budget comes from Congress, he said. The rest is from 5 million Americans and hundreds of corporations.
In being consistently edifying, WHRO and its kind are a model amid the ruck of TV offerings. by CNB