“Guideposts in a time of
change” working group
Notes from 3rd, 2nd and 1st call and background materials
December 6, 2010
Editorial Integrity for Public Media
a joint project of the Affinity Group Coalition and Station Resource Group
0
Contents
Page

Overview of the working group’s process (revised for added call)
2

Summary of discussion points on 1st draft of principles from 11/30 call
3-6

Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (by discussion point)
7 - 20
Appendix:

Notes from the 11/18 discussion of key points for the four draft principles areas
22 - 36
1. Intended Outcomes: what public media seeks to achieve; its purpose for being
2. Means: how public media realizes its intended outcomes
3. Methods/Practices: how integrity is ensured in realizing the intended outcomes of public media
4. Constituency Relationships: who is involved in realizing public media’s outcomes and the needed working relationships
5. Added notes on usage of and alternatives to the term “public media”


Notes from the 11/02 call discussion
-
Objectives and output criteria
-
Calibration on incoming perspectives of each working group member
-
Constituency mapping: parties, perspectives and interests to consider
-
Factors and forces at play assessment: existing and emerging industry, market and social factors to address
-
Principle drafting focus and approach
37 - 50
Background information
-
Statement of Principles of Editorial Integrity in Public Broadcasting (1984)
51 - 53
-
Working group members and contact information
54
1
Working group process and timeline
Revised
Current activity
1st call:
Scoping,
calibrating &
framing
Off-line work:
Further
framing
2nd call:
Key point
drafting
Off-line work:
Text
Drafting
3rd call:
Critique &
refinement
Off-line work:
Further
drafting
4th call:
Critique &
refinement
Off-line work:
“Final”
drafting
11/02/10
11/03–11/15
11/18
11/19-11/29
11/30
12/01-12/13
12/14
12/14-12/17
Objectives and
output criteria for
the group’s work
 Calibration of
incoming
perspectives of
working group
members
 Constituency map
review, refinement
and consideration
 Factors and forces
at play review,
refinement and
prioritization
 Drafting focus and
approach
 Next steps

Distillation and
circulation of key
discussion points
and issues from
the call (QH)
 Email review and
exchange as
needed (all)
 Drafting of
principles based
on working group
discussion (QH)

Review and
discussion of
draft principles
 Prioritization of
areas for rework
in next draft
 Identification of
terms needing
definition
 Plans for
gathering further
input by one-onone call and
email

Distillation and
circulation of
key discussion
points and
issues from the
first draft review
(QH)
 Email review
and exchange
as needed (all)
 Second draft
development of
principles based
on first review
input discussion
(QH)


Attending:
• Pat Aufderheide
• Dave Edwards
• Jackie Jones
• Marita Rivero
• Wick Rowland
• Jerry Wareham
• Skip Hinton
• Quentin Hope
• Ted Krichels
Distillation and
 Recap discussion
circulation of key
from 1st call
discussion points  Discussion and
and issues from
develop key
the call (QH)
points to be
 Updating of the
included in the
constituency map
draft
and factors at play
based on
discussion (QH)
 Initial listing of key
points to be
addressed in the
principles, as
guided by chosen
approach (QH)
 Email response
and exchange as
needed (all)
Attending:
• Pat Aufderheide
• Malcolm Brett
• Jackie Jones
• Marita Rivero
• Wick Rowland
• Jerry Wareham
• Quentin Hope
• Skip Hinton
• Ted Krichels

Review and
 Incorporation of
discussion of 2nd
remaining points
draft of principles
and edits from
(QH)
 Identification of
remaining points
 Wordsmithing as
in needs of rework
needed (all)
 Plans for
 E-mail review
gathering further
and “sign-off” by
input by one-onworking groups
one call and email
members along
with individual
summary
comments “for
the record”, as
desired (all)

Attending:
• Pat Aufderheide
• Malcolm Brett
• Marita Rivero
• Wick Rowland
• Jerry Wareham
• Quentin Hope
• Skip Hinton
• Tom Thomas
• Byron Knight
Documentation
of working
group’s process,
discussions and
supporting
materials (QH)
Steering
Committee
review
01/02-02/28/11

Review of working
team’s draft
principles and
other outputs

Follow-on
questions and
refinements of
outputs (if/as
needed)

Circulation of
working group
outputs to wider
audience

Endorsement of
principles for use
by public media
organizations(?)

Recommendation
s for further work
to be done

Final report to
CPB on overall
EIPM project
2
Summary discussion points on 1st draft of principles
(detailed notes follow)
Preface
These principles define the essential value of Public Media to U.S. society,
the unique role they play within the global media environment, and the ways
they ensure the editorial integrity of their work.
They are intended to provide the case for public and private support of
Public Media, challenge Public Media organizations to earn that support,
and safeguard the ability of Public Media to serve the public independently.
1. “Public Media”
usage: address
the singular/plural
usage issues
3. Role in education
and arts &
culture: far greater
prominence
needed
4. Media capabilities
and capacity:
clarify as part of
sustainability, not
an objective per se
To these ends, the following four principles address the objectives of Public
Media, the range of means by which it seeks to further these objectives, its
working methods and practices, and the needed working relationships
among it’s varied constituencies.
Objective
1. The objective of Public Media is to support a strong public culture.
Public Media is dedicated to developing and supporting a strong public
culture within the United States characterized by:
• An informed and engaged public that enables a strong and effective
democracy
• Civil discourse and interaction among varying interests and perspectives
leading to greater shared knowledge and understanding of differences,
constructive problem-solving and sustained community building
2. “Public culture”:
address definition
of, hazards of
using, alternatives
for and/or viability
of using a single
term
• Public access to the offerings of the arts, humanities and sciences,
resources and opportunities for life-long education, and media for the
expression of a diversity of voices, experiences and views.
• Strong local communities that offer individual opportunity and a high
quality of life.
In support of this objective, Public Media exist as a public service to ensure
sustained media capabilities and capacity are available in local communities
across the United State and their services are available to all residents of all
ages at free or very affordable cost.
As a public service Public Media provides the necessary complement to
available individual and commercial media focused on more private and
profit-making objectives.
3
Summary discussion points on 1st draft of principles (continued)
(detailed notes follow)
Means
2. Public Media works to build a public culture through a variety of means,
media and platforms suited to local communities.
Public Media pursue its objective through a range of means based on community
interests, needs and opportunities. These include:
• Producing original content
• Acquiring, aggregating and curating content from diverse sources
• Collaborating with others in the community on co-creating content
• Convening community groups and forums for exchange, dialogue and interaction
• Using a variety of forums, technologies and platforms to distribute content,
convene groups and develop community
• Developing organized and coordinated capacity and capability within the
community to create and contribute to multiple forms of media, including
providing facilities, technology and skills development.
• Through these means Public Media works to provide the information, places,
processes and tools that enable citizens to create and participate in a strong
public culture.
5. Public forums and public
spaces: obligation or option?
need to be addressed one
way or another
6. Viewpoints by Public
Media, including
editorializing and
advocacy: needs to be
addressed one way or
another at the principle
level (here and/or in
Practices section)
4
Summary discussion points on 1st draft of principles (continued)
(detailed notes follow)
Practices
3. Public Media ensure the integrity of their work through established
professional practices, transparency and accountability.
To be effective in achieving their prime objective, Public Media rely on a public
reputation as widely trusted, reliable and community-grounded content sources and
service providers. They build this reputation through practices that ensure the
integrity of their work processes and products, including:
• Operating within a system of defined professional values and ethics, stated
standards of fairness, honesty, accuracy and quality control, and independent
decision making processes.
• Broadly engaging the community, seeking out informed and experienced parties,
and incorporating multiple perspectives
• Providing full transparency as to sources used, funding received, individual and
organizational perspective held, and other factors of potential concern to users is
assessing trustworthiness
• Providing additional context, background and sources for those seeking more indepth views
• Being publicly accountable for the integrity of their content, processes and
relationships or clearly stating the limits of such accountability when the content
and action of other parties are involved.
• Operating within the letter and spirit of applicable statutory and regulatory
requirements and restrictions
• Assuring that public and private funds are properly and effectively spent through
sound fiscal and management policies and procedures.
7. Accountability: define
meaning and means
8. “Independent”:
reorient to integrity
given emphasis on
collaboration
9. FCC license holders: callout
particular obligations and
accountabilities (here and/or
elsewhere)
5
Summary discussion points on 1st draft of principles (continued)
11/30 call notes on
1st draft
(detailed notes follow)
Constituency relationships
4. Public Media rely on relationships of mutual respect, transparency
and accountability with their various constituents.
Public Media works within a network of important constituents and relies on
mutually productive relationships with these groups to be effective. While the
nature of the working relationships vary by constituent, common themes of
respect, transparency and accountability run throughout.
10. Constituency
relationships overall:
either sharpen (what in
particular for each) or
generalize (common points
for all)
• Users:
- Share own perspectives and knowledge
- Contribute informed content
- Provide feedback, questions and criticism
- Hold Public Media accountable to these principles
• Content partners and providers:
- Share-in Public Media’s objective of building a strong public culture
- Respect and share Public Media’s work practices and standards
- Be equally transparent and accountable
• Other media organizations:
- Respect Public Media’s operating principles
- Be equally clear and transparent in defining own principles
• Funders:
- Share-in Public Media’s objective of building a strong public culture
- Be transparent in interests and intents in providing funding
- Respect Public Media’s methods and practices of integrity
• Governing boards
11. Governing boards: add
role for upholding the
public’s interest
- Support Public Media’s objective of building a strong public culture
- Be transparent in interests and intentions in setting directions and establishing
boundaries
• Legislators and regulators:
- Safeguard Public Media’s methods and practices of integrity
- Be clear and transparent about interests and intentions in establishing requirements
and restrictions affecting Public Media
6
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
1. “Public media” usage
Pat: The singular/plural thing is something we’ve spent a ton of time wrestling with here (at the CSM) and we have a very pragmatic
solution. When we’re talking to public broadcasters or about public broadcasters we make public media singular just because you are
and think of yourselves as entities all under that Public Broadcasting umbrella and you don’t want to be labeled just broadcasters now.
I don’t have a solid intellectual justification for that. It’s very, very pragmatic. I agree that media is plural grammatically and that we
also see that there are many forms of those kinds of expression that we’re doing. But as jargon the singular seems to work.
Wick: I’ll come back to the defense of using the plural form since I was the guy who introduced it last time. I think it is dangerous
both intellectually and politically to use the word media in any way in a singular form. I think it’s been used against news and reporting
and good cultural practice in the media. There’s a very, very clear history of that over this last 20 or 30 years and I don’t think we
should be party to falling into that trap.
We in the so-called Public Broadcasting licensee elements of the public media are becoming more multiplatform everyday in various
aspects. We’re all learning and becoming more sensitive to the different characteristics of those media platforms and the content
forms that they reflect. We ought to continue to understand that diversity and endorse the notion of a plural.
Tom: I agree on the plural and I think part of the awkwardness is just that people are unaccustomed to seeing the construction of
“public media are”. One notion that occurred to me is to use the formal structure of “public media are this or whatever” in the lead
bolded statements but then elsewhere through the flow to use just the first person plural and say, “We this” and “we that.” I think it’s
much more comfortable on the ear and eye.
I’m willing to be a little awkward on our bold-faced statements for the purpose of making the points that you and others have
suggested of “there’s a lot of us under this tent.” But then just use ‘we’ throughout the subsequent narrative flow. It reads much better
if you do that and all awkwardness of noun-verb agreement that still remains in the document falls away.
7
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
2. “Public culture”
Jerry: I love the idea of public culture and I understand it personally. It’s a great thing but I am concerned that the word “public” is not
the right way to go. Maybe we can find a way to express it more fully and I think we should explore alternatives. The only one I came
up with quickly was American Culture. It’s also often referred to as civil society or something along those lines.
Malcolm: I understand why we use the phrase ‘Public culture’ and I think it makes sense as we understand it. But for external
audiences, I don’t think it’s a useful phrase for us. I think it can be a distraction in that people may fix on it and use it as leverage
against what some may see as elitist culture and the insulated vision that Public Broadcasting has to the world, which is not really the
conversation we want to be having. So, I do have a little bit of problem with that particular phrase.
Wick: I’m not quite understanding what the concern about it is. Maybe I’ve come out of an environment in which it’s been used quite
expansively and honorably over time. So, I guess I feel we need to explore that particularly since there isn’t an alternative on the table
that I think is as comprehensive as it is.
Malcolm: I agree. I do not have a good suggestion and there may not be a better alternative. I think that as our critics look at our
work, one of the things they can look at us and say is that we are not arbiters of the public culture. To me that’s a distraction and a
potentially divisive conversation that takes us away from what we’re trying to accomplish here. Others may not feel that way, and
that’s fine. I just thought I’d raise it because I think that it will not be heard in all quarters the way we intend it and the way we hear it.
Wick: I understand that concern about being demonized. This of course forces us back to this American reluctance to recognize
merit in creative activity and communications. We all have, particularly people around this table, very high standards for production -cultural arts, public affairs, news. We know quality when we see it and we’ve all built or are building institutions that support that. Yet
we find ourselves on the defensive about doing that.
Somehow it’s un-American to say that there are standards and classes of quality and that we stand for some higher level of those. I
hope we don’t get pushed back on our heels too much on that one, because the alternative ultimately is that we become like that
which we stand in opposition to. We are down market -- everything for everybody -- without necessarily any sense of standards or the
very principles that we’re trying to articulate in this document. That is a very difficult position for us to be in I think.
Malcolm: I couldn’t agree with you more about what it is we ought to be doing. That’s a great articulation of much of what we do and
ought to be doing. So, I may be looking for a distinction without a difference and I don’t mean that we should back away from our
standards and our principles. I also think it’s very dangerous to say that we are the arbiters of the public culture and we take that
mantel on ourselves. That opens up an opportunity for a conversation that’s really not helpful in the context of this particular
discussion.
8
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
2. “Public culture” (continued)
Wick: That part of it I would agree with you, Malcolm, absolutely. I think we don’t want to put ourselves in some high priesthood
position or something that can be interpreted as that. And, if we have language in there that does that, either explicitly or implicitly,
then we should pay attention to it. I think the reason we got into this last time was around that discussion of associating ourselves
with those activities in the community both locally and nationally that otherwise aren’t going to be supported by the marketplace,
precisely because of its tendency to chase audience size first and foremost.
Jerry: I agree with Malcolm. I agree very strongly. Wick, you said it when you talked about this reluctant and anti-intellectual strain in
this nation -- or its perception anyway. In fact, there couldn’t be anything more American than what we’re talking about with public
culture. It is at the very heart of our citizenship that goes right back to the founding of the nation. The active informed, the active
engaged citizenry in every aspect. My concern is the language and, as Malcolm indicated, the fact that the language will be either not
be understood at all or worse, used against us.
Pat: If you wanted to figure out what’s a substitute for public culture, which is something we have certainly spent a ton of time doing
over at our job, then you can also look to “civic culture”, which is what the Knight Foundation likes. They hate the word public, they
think it sounds like government. So, they like to use the word ‘civic.’ If you were turn to OSI, they like to use the word “open” – “open
society”. You could say “democratic culture”.
I can’t imagine you would not want to stake a claim to asserting that you support a shared culture in which people can address the
issues that they think are important together in a civil way -- which is what would distinguish you from a host of private information
services and cultural services of all kinds. It’s the one thing that would make your media services unique. And it’s why I keep arguing
that you want to frame all of your cultural and educational services within that notion of creating a vital public or civic culture. That is
where your unique value added is going to be in the long run.
Marita: No one says civic society or democratic society anymore. Is that wrong?
Pat: Well, we are a democratic society, but I think what you’re talking about is trying to create, to add to, to nurture a whole fabric of
culture -- a set of habits and expectations and a body of shared knowledge and shared standards within which people act so that they
can actually function democratically. So they grow up with enough education to do that, so they have enough shared points of
reference. So they have enough confidence in the integrity of the information sources that they’re drawing on. And so they actually
have spaces they can turn to, whether they’re virtual or real, where they will be safe and trusting to encounter each other in. These all
are things that public broadcasters now do successfully. You don’t seem very good at naming that, though, or owning it.
Since 1980 it’s been deeply unfashionable to use the term like the ‘public interest’. Public service and public interest are two terms
that sound deeply 1970s. So, the real question here is how do you change the framework on the pictures (the George Laycoff
problem) not have that umbrella be labeled communist or elitist.
9
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
2. “Public culture” (continued)
Additional commentary on the difficulties of finding the right language …
Wick: I think the difficulty is because we as a institution ourselves have not in-depth queried these concepts very much and
embraced and developed them in any kind of sophisticated way. There’s been a lot of discussion about it in the Academy but that
does not translate very well into applied public policy.
Pat: I’ve got to say, the Academy is also very good at bleating and hand-ringing. And, it’s a very elitist discussion in the Academy
about why people can’t realize that they should be better. I’m definitely not making the case that the Academy’s been doing work that
public broadcasters haven’t.
And I’m not arguing that you should try to adopt words that may be inflammatory to good people who want everybody to stand on their
own two feet. And, I have to say that one of the chastening things about watching Obama’s first two years is seeing that some of the
most obvious points that Obama has made about people needing to work together seem to have completely gone by people.
Wick: What I’m getting at Pat, is that without a framework of more popular discussion from Habermas to Dewey all the way to the
contemporary iterations of all of that, it’s very difficult to have a conversation about this and we do live in somewhat different silos on
these issues and it’s just ironic that Public Broadcasting, which is driven by so much of those principles and values, doesn’t have a
very open discourse about it.
Pat: That is exactly where we’re at. We’re trying to figure out what terms will pass the smell test, so that we don’t get hammered by
Fox -- and at the same time maintain true to a mission that is what we would not only like to do, but what is indubitably going to be the
one reason why anybody should provide public funds for it.
Summary comments on seizing the ground …
Pat: Let me just say, because I’m not going to have to live with the consequences of any of this, that whatever you decide to do is
fine. I’m just painfully aware of the reality that’s been articulated here. It’s the reality that we’ve been struggling with for the last six
years. We can’t think of a way out of aggressively owning the concept somehow -- and being willing to stand up for it.
Wick: That’s what I was getting at last time. Perhaps, sometimes you just need a good offense and go after claiming the ground.
And if there are invidious distinctions that have to be drawn with those who also claim parts of the ground, so be it. I think sometimes
we’re getting far too shy, too reticence about taking on the monoliths that we are working in opposition to.
10
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
3. Role in education, arts and culture
Jerry: Education needs to be really called out. It needs to be first among equals in terms of what we’re about and be much more
prominent. Arts and culture also need to be much more prominent. By education, I mean formal and informal. And by arts and culture
I mean high as well as popular.
Marita: That came up in our group before and we talked about it a bit and did decide to capture it as an example of the offerings (…
for life-long education, blah-blah). We subordinated it bit deliberately. Part of it was that the strong focus on education is more public
television than public radio because radio tends toward the lifelong learning or the informed citizenry side of education, rather than
more formal children’s programming. We also imagined that we would use these for examples rather than targets because it allowed
for flexibility. I don’t know if it sunk too far down or not, but that’s why it became a description of our support for a strong public culture.
I’m interested in the issues of diversity and acknowledging the new demographic framework in our country -- and the increased value
we can have in developing a notion of what citizenship means. I’m trying to get to what we as licensees have to bring to that
opportunity by being a strong player in mass media. Somewhere in there for me it does get down to creating a strong civic core and
that’s where education, art, the culture, all those things, become a part of what contributes to that. That’s the lens I was looking at this
through.
Jerry: I went back and reread the parts of that first discussion about defining education and arts and culture as subsets of the public
culture. But again, as I read the draft I felt that those things were not coming out as clearly as I think they need to.
Wick: I want to be certain that Jerry’s concern about education is not forgotten. I think it’s the counterpoint to the public culture, the
other side of the coin of the public culture discussion that we were having. It is an important concept to be highlighted, although it
varies considerably across the face of the institution.
It’s important politically in the public television system that we do so because so many of our licensees are rooted in the formal
instrumentalities of education. It isn’t just a continuing lifelong learning notion, so we have to be aware of that.
And, I think we all understand its political appeal inside the beltway. It will be an important safety bar for us to be adhering to. So,
bringing it up a little bit more and maybe elaborating where we could would be useful. We can do that without necessarily
discomforting those elements within public media for whom that more pedagogic form of education is not necessarily quite as
important.
11
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
3. Role in Education, arts and culture
Additional discussion on the relationship between education and cultural programming and “public culture”…
Quentin: It seems that we’ve had two conversations going here, one about public culture in the sense of the civic culture -- the
dialogue, the robust public involvement -- which by definition is collective. We’ve also had a discussion about what public media does
for individuals that is more content-focused, whether it’s educational programming or what is offered in terms of arts, humanities and
human knowledge programming. We’re trying to cover both and its raises the question of whether public culture or some other phrase
can cover both or whether we need to explicitly and separately talk about the fact that we’re serving both the collective interest,
whether called the public interest or public culture interest, and individual interests.
Wick: It’s like many of these things. We straddle matters and have feet in both camps. I don’t know how we avoid addressing both
of those dimensions because we are part of a collective public community enterprise. And much of what we said in the first quarter
hour of this discussion was very good articulation of those purposes. Yet in many ways that does come down to the individual’s
growth and development. So, what are we looking at? Are we looking at the forest? Or are we looking at the trees?
Jerry: It strikes me that whether they are services that people are accessing for any of the individual purposes you discussed or
they’re contributing content and contributing to dialogue, it’s really the individual who’s being served and the result of the service is
that the individuals can then interact with one another and strengthen society. So, I don’t think you can get away from either one of
them. But, who are we serving? I think we’re serving the people. And, the people then come together and strengthen the society.
Pat: In general, I think that Public Broadcasting has done itself a disservice by segmenting functions, like kid’s programming,
educational programming, and then the Brit-Coms, Antiques Roadshow and the other syndicated stuff.
The thing that unites the strongest programming for me is that you are contributing to people having a better, more well-informed
conversation with each other about the things that are important in life, in their lives, and figuring out what constitutes a framework of
reference and what kind of behaviors are appropriate. My argument about the kids was that there’s a lot of kid’s programming out
there and a lot of it is designed purely to entertain kids, sometimes fantastically. But the shows that are on Public Television treat
children like citizens of their world. The point of educational programming on Public Broadcasting is to help people to have agency in
their world and to be the better, more useful participants in this democratic society. Over-archingly, there are goals here.
I actually don’t know how the Brit-coms function into that, but I don’t much care about those, because I think that all the commercial
services are gobbling up that part of Pubic Broadcast service anyway. That’s not where you compete.
Malcolm: No, it’s not. It’s an ancillary thing and we can debate the Brit-coms or we can just look past them but, in fact, they do create
some type of community that is context for some of our other work. I don’t mean to oversell that. But, there is something there.
Pat: And that’s a double-edged sword because I think that’s a community that’s very white, very old, very scared of any kind of
controversy. I agree that it’s a community but I don’t know that that’s the one that’s going to carry you into the future.
12
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
4. Media capabilities and capacity
Malcolm: In the “Objective” section we refer to Public media as existing “to ensure sustained media capabilities and capacity are
available to communities”. I don’t think that’s “why we exist” but a component of our sustainability. We exist to assure that “the
product or benefits of media capabilities and capacity” are available to communities – i.e. information, context, analysis, dialogue, etc.
5. Public forums and public spaces
Tom: A question that has surfaced (in the other groups) is the notion of public media as public forum or public space. I’ve read
through the draft a couple of times looking for how I would distill an answer from this document that would say, “So, is it the character
and responsibility of public media to provide basically an open forum? Or is it the character of public media to provide a curated,
edited, programmed service, that may be inclusive of many points of view and many publics, were ultimately the public media
organization makes the final calls?”
Pat: We did not think that was either or. That’s where we were getting into a plurality of services. Right now, Public Broadcasters
definitely do both of those things. They provide face-to-face public forums, they provide virtual comments sections, and some of them
even provide wikis -- and then they also provide curated services.
Tom: The question that arises from time to time around the country is do they have the obligation to do all of those things? Or is it
their choice?
Pat: Certainly the FCC license doesn’t require them to. But if they think it that is not going to be part of what people expect in the
future, I just don’t see how that’s going be a winning strategy.
Tom: Exactly. That’s why I’m saying there needs to be something saying that we thought through this issue, as we did with
accountability, and that there are some different dimensions of it from the formal to the informal, from the legal to the social.
We have to speak to what do we really mean when we take on the word public. There is an inherent tension, particularly between the
responsibilities of licensed broadcasters who, at least in the use of their licensed spectrum, have a set of responsibilities at the end of
the day for each and everything that is transmitted by them. The one and only exception to that in law is political messages from
candidates for federal office. But, in every other respect, there’s an affirmative responsibility that broadcasters have to own or control
that content. That is a natural tension with an expanding stance of the role of public media in providing an array of ways in which the
public can collect and express itself, or themselves, in relatively unfiltered, unedited kinds of ways -- and that there’s a sense of valued
service in providing such forums, convenings and so on.
We need to take head-on the notions of both what are the responsibilities and where’s the direction of service -- and which of those
things are obligations and which need some more clarity.
13
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
5. Public forums and public spaces (continued)
Wick: On something like the forum versus production bipolarity, it is both in the institution at large. The question is what is the
responsibility of the individual licensee or entity. That reminds me of the old arguments about balance in programming. Is an
individual program supposed to be perfectly reflective of all viewpoints around the issue or is the entity responsible for dealing with
that over a period of time in a multiplicity of programs? Again, it comes down to the trees and the forest. Many forests are balanced
or are in constant struggle among different species and types. If you look across the array of possibilities in public media, we can deal
with these responsibilities and challenges in diverse ways.
Overall, the institution ought to reflect all of those sorts of elements. Whether or not it should be the same mixture and ratios in any
one entity I think is probably doubtful.
6. Viewpoints by Public Media, including editorializing and advocacy
Tom: Another unaddressed issue is the question of are public media entities civic, cultural or social actors with in effect views of their
own -- or are they expected to be neutral platforms?
It’s in things like the question of should non-commercial licensees or, more particularly, should CPB grantees be allowed to
editorialize? The Supreme Court resolved that question on the side of ‘Yes, they should be.’ The fact that they receive federal
support should not be any obstacle to them doing so -- it’s a matter of their own choice.
Others would say, “Oh, this is so obvious”. They are actors in this by deciding if they will put this kind of music on and not that kind of
music, do this performance and not that performance, and work with this school and not that school. These are all decisions.
But there’s also a notion advanced by others that at the end of the day, it’s the “on the one hand and on the other hand”. If you put
this school on you put that school on. It is the notion that the responsibility of the public media entity is to be fair and balanced, as
they say, as opposed to having a point of view.
(Extending the question to whether public media entities should be advocates) aligns with some of the issues that have surfaced in
our funding and firewalls working group. There the question is, “are agendas necessarily a bad thing?”. What’s the appropriate
posture of public media entities as they work with or are approached by either funders or editorial partners or just other working
groups who do have a particular advocacy view? “We think child abuse is a bad thing. Don’t you? And we want to work with us to
stamp that out.”
That’s a pretty easy one. Most people tend to say ‘yes’ to it. But, as you move along a continuum, you get to things that some people
consider are fairly worthy causes that others might not. So there are questions about accepting funding from entities who have such
agendas for anything in a content area related to where those agendas may be. Similarly some are joining in editorial partnerships to
create content with entities that may have such agendas.
14
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
6. Viewpoints by Public Media, including editorializing and advocacy (continued)
Pat: This has been the question that we’ve been circling around. How do you get beyond objectivity? And, I think what we were
saying is that we want standards for civil and productive public discourse around important issues. We provide the trusted space to
make that happen, as well as creating the standards and providing you with information on which to be able to do that -- and giving
you the cultural touch points to be able to do it. That’s not a claim of neutrality. That’s an active claim that you’re creating a space in
which something specific can happen, which is public discourse.
Malcolm: Let’s use the child abuse case. I think there are certain universally or nearly universally held values that stations can
legitimately stake out as having a position on, like “child abuse is bad.” When it comes to public policy related to child abuse, that’s a
different conversation. We have to be able to make the distinction between values and public policy issues and if and how we ought
to be position on one versus the other.
For example, everyone says “war is bad”. That doesn’t mean this war is bad. Do we take a position that we’re anti-war? It’s a
different question than do we take a position that we’re anti-war in Afghanistan. One is a principle and one is a public policy issue.
Quentin: Would that be saying there is a values driven selection of issues to focus on -- war, child abuse, poverty, discrimination -but the actual solutions would not be a point of advocacy or editorializing?
Wick: In some cases those values relate to your interpretation or definition of facts. One is pro environment, one is green, but there
are elements of the society that simply do not believe global warming is a.) a phenomena, and b.) worth turning into a public policy
issue.
Quentin: Just by broaching the topic your values and beliefs are driving the selection?
Tom: Precisely, this is what the BBC concluded when they did a fairly deep-dive exploring “is there a bias in our reporting?” Their
conclusion was that once stories were selected for coverage the actual reporting and editorial treatment was very rigorous, very fair,
highest standards, etc. But in the selection of stories to cover, in building the editorial agenda for the day, the week, or wherever,
there was some sense of bias there. Certain kinds of stories tended to get reported more often and more prominently and others were
more rarely assigned or developed. So, then, “Why is that?” they inquired, which is where I lost track of the thread. But, there is that
central finding of a distinction between the high standard in execution once choices have been made about topics, subjects and
issues versus “are we doing the best job that we can and should as a public service broadcaster in selecting?”
We ought to speak to what are our aspirations or our standards, our expectations of ourselves with regards to those kinds of things. I
think Malcolm’s framing certainly of the distinction between public policy views and issues is a significant one. Then following from
that, is how do we choose and select those issues to which we turn our attention?
15
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
6. Viewpoints by Public Media, including editorializing and advocacy (continued)
Jerry: We’ve made a stab at that through our listening project, in trying to actively engage the community to ascertain what those
needs and issues are. While it’s imperfect as all things are imperfect, it does give us a listing of what the community says the
important issues and values are for selection. I’m an advocate of bringing back old-fashioned ascertainment initiatives and making a
commitment to engage the community in order to establish that agenda.
Marita: That’s the kind of lens I was talking about. I look at this through the changing American demographic diversity and is there a
way of strengthening our intention to in fact reflect our community? Because that question about who picks the stories is not adequate
moving forward. We cannot wind up with the same handful of stories and be editorially sound. So, that question right there, about
really reflecting our community, I think has to be central to any discussion of editorial principle. Our intention here cannot be just
routine, “we’re for diversity and plurality in the American system and blah-blah-blah”, because we’re at a critical juncture in which we
in fact have to find ways to represent our full communities.
7. Accountability
Pat: I was reading “accountability” thinking, “I wonder exactly what that means in this context?” And I realized I didn’t know. And I
bet people here do. But I also realized if I were somebody who didn’t already agree with all of this and asked, “what exactly do you
mean by that?”, I’m not sure I’d know the answer.
Jerry: At the core of this there are certain formal aspects of the accountability that most of the people on this call are sensitive to as
licensees. There’s the fact that a license itself is a non-commercial educational entity that has certain kinds of requirements. There
are the terms of our CSGs from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which also require a kind of accountability. Deriving from
both of those licensing and federal funding structures are things like governing boards who hold the licenses, who do share
responsibilities for the public and therefore presumably hold managements to account. And then there are community advisory
boards among many of our licensees, whether required or not, which also add another dimension to it.
I suspect all of those formal aspects of it were in the back of the mind of this phrase and they’re certainly reasonable aspects for
articulations of that question.
(Another point on accountability) is that the largest source of support for Public Broadcasting is public subscription, donations. In that
respect, like it or not, we’ve found ourselves in some form of market and so we are accountable to our viewers and listeners, to our
audience.
Pat: I don’t think that’s accountability. At the time they gave you the money they didn’t give it to you with an accountability
requirement. They just gave it to you.
16
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
7. Accountability (continued)
Jerry: The requirement is if we want the money next year, we better be doing a good job.
Pat: I just don’t think that’s accountability. I think that’s customer service.
Malcolm: I think one of the issues is that the accountability is a product of our commitment to articulating in advance not only our
mission, but the ways in which we’re going to deliver on that mission. So, the accountability comes at the front end. It comes, in fact,
before donations and before the federal investment and then circles back around -- people get to measure the degree to which we
fulfill our stated intentions.
Pat: I’m not saying that’s not a wonderful thing. I’m just saying it’s different from accountability.
Jerry: Many of us put in a great deal of effort into documenting that accountability, documenting that service and reporting that to
those funders.
Pat: I don’t want to make it sound like I’m disparaging that at all. I’m just saying that is the sign of a really strong relationship that you
have. It’s a trust relationship and it’s really important but it’s different from accountability. Accountability is, “if I didn’t do exactly what I
say then you have formal mechanisms by which you hold me accountable.”
Quentin: Pat, what you’re pressing on may go back more to the boards and the governance structures in the sense of classic
accountability terms, where you begin by standing by your content and process relationships. But, it also means that you’ll accept
challenges, you’ll respond effectively, and, if there is something wrong or weak or missing, you’ll admit that and you’ll take corrective
action. And there being processes in place for doing all this.
Pat: I love that -- being publicly accountable through institutional processes such as boards and also through the transparency
processes and the professional standards that we’ve already mentioned. That kind of accountability was to me folded into the
professional values and ethics standards and transparency.
Jerry: Maybe there’s another word than accountability, but beyond the donor relationship we also operate in a marketplace of people
simply using our service, whether they donate or not. We find ourselves daily making account to them for our programs and services
and what we do.
Pat: I just don’t see why that’s different from any commercial media service.
Wick: It is both spiritually and morally more than a consumer relationship. We all have those email exchanges with people who hold
our mission in front of us and say, “That program last night did not live up to that standard.” Or it did. In some classes they’re actually
positive. That strikes right to the heart of us. It’s shared with our staffs; it’s shared with governing members. We think of that as part
of the accountability process.
17
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
7. Accountability (continued)
Jerry: It’s different than the commercial relationship because last time I looked NBC wasn’t asking for voluntarily contributions from
millions of individual donors. It is a very different relationship.
Malcolm: Part of it has to do with the fact that we also hold ourselves accountable, which may not be as measurable but is part of the
promise of public media.
Tom: Maybe a way that we could set this up is to parse out these distinctions that we’re making right here in this conversation in a
hierarchical way. At the top of the accountability pyramid are very formal mechanisms of accountability that are legal and structural,
that go to the governance of organizations, which are based in the communities we serve, that go to the fact that most of us in public
media operate with licenses from a federal regulatory authority and most of us are funded through the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting. That sets an array of standards as to what we do in association with that funding that we must certify every year.
Those are all formal, legal, structural kinds of things.
Second, is an array of accountability relationships that we have with philanthropy, with state and local government, and others who
provide very significant funding to what we do and where there is a pretty direct and often contractual relationship associated with that
funding.
Then third, at the broadest level is an array of ways in which our organization promote a sense of accountability and responsiveness
with those who use the service and many of whom donate to it.
The mechanisms are at different levels and have different aspects to them. We feel all of those dimensions of accountability but we
also understand that there’s a very big difference between the top of the pyramid -- the directive from the board of trustees or board of
regents or a letter that comes on FCC letterhead – and, at the other end, the angry supporter who says, ‘I’m canceling my
subscription.’ But, we can say all of those things. None of it has to be taken away, but we can reflect that they are different.
Quentin: As you went through that, Tom, it makes me think that this is an even more important point because it is one of the more
distinguishing characteristics of public media. Because of those layers and levels, that real system of accountability, public media is
much stronger than most media. In other media, in many cases, accountability is ultimately to some private, individual or corporate
interest and only indirectly to the public through the interests and concerns of advertisers and sponsors. Such media are responding
to pressures, they do feel accountable that way, but it’s a different sort of accountability.
Wick: That’s a great point. We can actually turn this argument into a positive.
18
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
8. “Independence”
Jerry: Because of the strong call for collaboration, I would much rather focus on editorial integrity, and the process that yields that
integrity, as opposed as using words like independent judgment. It’s about integrity not independence -- though relative to my point
about the FCC, licensees do have a special obligation to take exclusive responsibility for the content that is broadcast.
9. FCC license holders
Jerry: We set out, and I certainly was among those who advocated, creating principals that could guide both broadcast and nonbroadcast activity and could be adopted by public broadcasters and others in public media. Now that we look at this as a draft
product, I am thinking that perhaps we may want to call out or acknowledge the unique responsibilities of those public media
organizations who hold FCC licenses. That license brings with it particular obligations and responsibilities that those who are not FCC
licensees do not have, at least in relationship with the operation of the stations. It’s also my understanding that it is the status as
licensee from which we have derived or claimed some of our legal protections. So, that may be something that we want to incorporate
here and acknowledge in some way.
Marita: I too am always interested in calling out what we as FCC licensees particularly have to contribute. I don’t know if we caught
that. I really like the idea that we try to think about that one more clearly.
Pat: I’d love to know what that language is from the people who are concerned about the licensee requirements. I’m perfectly
sensitive to the fact that that’s important, I just don’t know specifically what that is that we haven’t addressed.
11. Constituency relationships (overall)
Pat: There used to be a real reason why the individual constituency relationships were broken out. But I was trying to think of what’s
the most concise, efficient way to do this and I ran out of reasons why a lot of these wouldn’t really share the same language and not
need to be broken out.
Quentin: To that point, I had two reactions in preparing the draft. One was that it could be covered at a higher level in terms of the
common themes and without the breakout. The other was that the problem is that the breakouts are not specific enough in terms of
“in what areas” and “in what ways” are relationships of respect, transparency and accountability needed with each particular
constituency. It’s in between right now. It’s not sharp enough to justify the breakout yet distinctions exist. The test would be whether
it can be sharpened-up enough to justify the breakout. If we can’t do that, we can roll it up.
Pat: I would love that. Then, you wouldn’t have to repeat the common shared things every time.
19
Detailed discussion notes on 1st draft of principles (cont.)
From 11/30 call discussion
and advance emails
11. Governing board roles
Malcolm: In regard to Governing Boards, it may be helpful to state that one of governing boards’ responsibilities is to recognize and
support the public’s interest in public media as a driving concept. This reaches back to the Wingspread values with a nod to fiduciary
responsibility and “the public trust”.
20
Appendix
21
Notes from the 11/18 second call discussion
Discussion areas for defining key points for the principles
3
Methods or
Practices
1
how integrity is ensured in
realizing the intended
outcomes of public media
2
Intended
outcomes
what public media
seeks to achieve;
its purpose for
being
Means
how public media
realizes its
intended outcomes
Constituents
4
Public Media’s distinctive value
to society and role in the
overall media environment
Note: The actual statement of the principles may or may not follow this structure. It is provided at
this point only to help identify and explicate key points and concepts to include in the principles.
who is involved in realizing
public medias outcomes
and what working
relationships are needed
5
Added notes on usage
of and alternatives to
the term “public
media”
22
1. Intended Outcomes – discussion notes
- what public media seeks to achieve; its purpose for being
1984 Wingspread Principles
Potential intended outcomes for 2010 and beyond
Introduction:
 An informed and engaged public that enables a strong and effective
democracy
• bring to Americans the highest accomplishments of our society
and civilization in all of its rich diversity
• permit American talent to fulfill the potential of the electronic
media to educate and inform
• provide opportunities for the diverse groupings of the American
people to benefit from a pattern of programming unavailable
from other sources
 Responsible citizens of their community, nation and world
 Civil discourse and interaction among varying interests and
perspectives leading to greater shared knowledge and understanding
of differences
I. We Are Trustees of a Public Service:
 Media access for a diversity of voices and views
• (reflect) the worthy purpose of the federal and state
governments to provide education and cultural enrichment to
their citizens
 Better and stronger local communities
• educate all citizens and public policymakers to our function
• assure that we can certify to all citizens that station
management responsibly exercises the editorial freedom
necessary to achieve public broadcasting's mission effectively
 A vital public culture
 A public reputation for public media as a trusted and reliable source
for content and engagement (amid many sources used
 “A vital public culture” as the umbrella outcome (objective)
Pat Aufderheide: I really love the stuff that is written here (though) there’s a lot of redundancy in the bullets. I think the big
umbrella term is a vital public culture.
Part of (that culture) is people understanding themselves as people who have agency, who have a public presence, who
have the right to participate in public decision making. Part of it is having expectations for how people should participate
when they are trying to solve problems together and address important issues in their lives, which are like standards and
practices. Part of it is having places, both physical and virtual, that are safe for them to be able to solve problems together.
Part of it is having reliable information for them to do that. And part of that is having tools as expressions and expectations
for those modes of expression so that they can contribute to that information.
23
1. Intended Outcomes – discussion notes (continued)
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
- what public media seeks to achieve; its purpose for being
 “Public culture” as an essential alternative to the pure materialistic marketplace (a second pillar)
Wick Rowland: Over and above that, (“public culture”) also links us to other forms of public expression than those we think of as
just simply the instrumentalities of television, radio, audio, visual content. It really ties into the question of the arts and cultural
practices of all kinds. It really is code for something that sets itself up as an alternative to pure materialistic marketplace
definitions of mass and popular culture.
We are linked, whether we deal with it consciously or not, with the agencies, the humanities, the arts, fine and performing, of all
kinds. And there is a struggle in this society over the extent to which those institutions are valued and should be supported
publicly or whether or not all of the forms of artistic expression should be simply reduced back to the marketplace and what
people will pay for or what advertisers will pay for. So, it is fraught – I think happily, it should be – with those implications.
Pat Aufderheide: This is where this question of having a role as a member of the public is so important because the implicit
contrast there is to your role as a consumer or as an individual. And the assumption, I think, that we’re all making is that public
culture requires public support.
This kind of culture that’s basic to democratic practice doesn’t (just) happen. If the cultural fabric isn’t there within which people
can act, then they don’t have the expectations that they can participate.
I see a lot of that problem in the Tea Party people who seem to believe that somebody was taking away their right to participate. I
feel that what they’re saying is, “I see this as something that people used to do, but we haven’t been doing it lately.” And I think
they’re wrong. I think it’s always a struggle to keep public culture alive. There was no golden age.
But you see the consequences in that kind of paranoid and embattled rhetoric when people don’t have the expectation that other
people will listen to them, that their issues won’t be addressed.
Wick Rowland: I think we should be trying to establish a pillar based in public service orientation that is much bigger and
stronger, that is more clearly defined as different from that huge pillar of the private enterprise and commercially supported
system, knowing that there’s all kinds of leakage back and forth between the two, but looking to have something on our side of
the equation that is much bigger and better supported than what we’ve ever had.
(The public value of the public pillar) is exactly the sorts of things that are on the right side of the ledger. Not just rhetorically, but
in substance, you can point to how we do that. We just came off an election season in which we did 18 debates for federal
offices, major statewide initiatives, and referendum. Nobody else in the private sector does that. It’s just one little example and
licensee after licensee can give you all kinds of examples of how we can do that. We don’t do it as well as we’d like across the
board because we don’t have the resources, but nonetheless, we know what to do, and when properly supported, we really make
it happen.
So, I think it’s getting substance and giving real voice to those words, values and terms that we’re listing there on the right side.
24
1. Intended Outcomes – discussion notes (continued)
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
- what public media seeks to achieve; its purpose for being
 Explicit reference to public media’s role in education and public service information
Jerry Wareham: I don’t disagree with anything that’s on the right-hand side but there may be an assumption that we, as a group,
make about what is included under some of these titles that others may not make. It may need to be explicit. Words that appear
on the side of the page from 1984 that don’t appear on the other side of the page (may need to be included), words like education
and culture.
There is a role (in education) that we have played and it continues to be very important. Somehow, we need to come up with an
outcome statement relating to education. Television in particular dedicates an enormous amount of its resource to educational
programming for young children and to other educational programming, more “small-e” than “large-E” these days but with new
technologies we can play a large-E role as well.
And then, there’s just plain old public service information that we provide and can provide, and maybe the only ones who will
provide.
Pat Aufderheide: I think it would be very helpful if it were spelled out for people who say, “Well, you’re just going to throw out the
kids and the educational part. You just talk about politics all the time.” And that’s why I like this term public culture because I
think that public television’s children’s programming is actually distinctive in children’s programming in the sense that it treats
children as citizens of their world. And it attempts to give them a framework for behaving well with others.
SpongeBob does that too but that is not really where SpongeBob lives. I would love to see these elements that do sell public
broadcasting pretty easily to a public that doesn’t really like to think about politics (included) under that public culture umbrella. I
think it will make it clear why and what kind of education public broadcasting is doing for kids -- and for adults with them.
 Focusing on overall outcomes vs. headlining underlying elements
Marita Rivero: If we’re just focusing on the word education and culture, I go back and forth in my head about whether we miss
something by not saying them or whether we’ve allowed ourselves to capture a larger set of content areas by leaving them off the
second (left-hand) wording. I don’t know that I have an answer to that. I’m always afraid when we start getting too long. I’m
wondering whether we could capture notions of culture and education without making them the lead line but use them more as
examples of areas in which we have interest and obligations.
Pat Aufderheide: I love that, Marita, because that would also help people see this as beyond providing information and news to
citizens.
Malcolm Brett: I think there’s an advantage in having some of this implicit because as you make things explicit you’re also
creating a list of things that are off the list.
Wick Rowland: It will come down to how much we think some of those values that are implicit in what we’ve stated are, in fact,
understood to be there. So, you can’t talk about an informed, strong, effective democracy without having a good educational
system and process. So, we all know that, but if we don’t say it, are we missing something here that’s important? And it’s
particularly important to many of our colleagues in various of our licensee structures across the system.
25
2. Means – discussion notes
- how public media realizes its intended outcomes
1984 Wingspread Principles
Potential means for 2010 and beyond
I. We Are Trustees of a Public
Service:
 Produce and distribute content
•
provide a wide range of
programming services of the
highest professionalism and quality
which can educate, enlighten and
entertain the American public
II. Our Service is Programming:
•
offer (the) audience public and
educational programming which
provides alternatives in quality,
type and scheduling
 Aggregate and curate content from diverse sources
 Provide forums for exchange, dialogue and interaction
 Collaborate with others in the community
 Broker media for a vital public culture (honestly, in many different ways – creating, co-creating,
curating, aggregating, matching, connecting, networking)
 Use all forms of media and mediated activity to facilitate community building
 Tell the stories and provide the narratives of community life and issues (at length and in-depth)
 Develop “organized capacity” within the community to create and contribute to all forms of media
(that aspires to a higher level of expression)
 Need to add “convening”
Malcolm Brett: I think this list is great but what’s missing this is the aggregation and curation of community organizations. You
mentioned forums for exchange, dialog, and interaction, and that may include the notion of convening community, but that’s
becoming more and more a programming strand for public radio and public television stations.
A concrete example of that would be a public broadcaster convening the local United Way, the local literacy center, and the local
school district to jointly think about multiple ways to address K-12 education issues in that community.
Marita Rivero: I think even of our forum network, which has brought together large numbers of non-profits in Boston who now
consider themselves a group because they’re recording and sending editorial content that we’re curating and assembling online.
 Examples creating “organized capacity”
Wick Rowland: A very good example of that (organized) capacity to provide a forum and help facilitate the ability of other
institutions to speak to and serve the community largely is the Minnesota Channel concept. There are examples all over the
country.
Jerry Wareham: I’ll give you one that we’re working on now. In Ohio, we operate the Ohio Channel, which is all about citizenship,
and history and culture of Ohio -- the Supreme Court, the legislature, those sorts of things -- in a 24/7 video feed that is a multicast
channel but it is also streamed on the internet -- and there’s an internet portal or site to all kinds of resources. You can type in a bill
number or a name of a legislator and call up the video of debate of that particular issue.
26
2. Means – discussion notes (continued)
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
- how public media realizes its intended outcomes
We’re working on a similar project now with the local consortium of higher education to develop a similar multiple media approach,
an approach that would have a 24/7 video stream that could be on cable or via digital multicast and also streamed on the internet.
It would include weekly television and radio programs that would be a portal through which we’d try to promote and engage anyone
who is interested in continuing their education. It’s in response to the identified need in our region to increase the number of
people who have bachelor’s degrees. And we have, in Northeastern Ohio, 600,000 who have some college, but no degree.
It’s a sort of a public service education “organized capacity” we convened with the consortium of higher education, the local
colleges, and universities to try to get it organized.
Wick Rowland: Let me give a couple of other examples. One is our college in St. Louis which recently did a project on the whole
mortgage crisis. The last bullet point talks about media, but that project went well beyond media to direct people to social services
to help them on issues related to bankruptcy and foreclosure, to connect them to resources directly whether in person, by
telephone or through print.
Recently in Wisconsin, we did a series on Vietnam veterans’ experiences. We had an event in which we brought veterans together
in the community and provided a context for different kind of engagement of these veterans in their local community over three
days. Much of this is subsidiary to the media component, but it’s much, much richer than the media component. And when you do
these things, it fundamentally changes the nature of the decision making about what content is included in the broadcast and the
online media because of the engagement piece.
Pat Aufderheide: I’m loving these examples. I’m inspired by them. So, I think this is exactly the kind of thing that people could
aspire to be doing, given the framework that we’re providing.
 Providing capacity even at the “utility” level and beyond the “programmatic”
Wick Rowland: There are some examples at an even more fundamental level of pipeline delivery. Tom Axtell spoke about some
of the projects that Vegas PBS is engaged with in Nevada where they’ve got seven or eight counties that don’t have broadband
capacity at all.
It’s hard for many of us in urban or eastern and upper Midwestern and west coast environments to understand this lack, but I’m
embarrassed to say, we’re discovering much of it here, even in our little part of the Rocky Mountain west and the western slope of
Colorado, where there are counties and populations that don’t have the fundamental wired or wireless capacities that the rest of us
take for granted. It’s a real detriment to the schools and the non-profit institutions.
We’re finding several of our colleague institutions around the country working with both the public and private sector to overcome
that. It’s a good example of organized capacity, right down at the ground level of the pipeline.
27
2. Means – discussion notes (continued)
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
- how public media realizes its intended outcomes
I think one of the interesting things about what Tom Axtell is doing is providing public service based on value of the utility that they
bring the community as opposed to the value of programmatic content that they uniquely deliver. And so, the question about how
we use our resources in ways that are more utility-like is an important conversation. In Las Vegas, they are using them for public
service. So that umbrella is there, but the editorial questions are very, very different because they’re providing this utility to third
parties.
 New “audiences” through smaller scale engagement
Marita Rivero: Really engaging audiences that haven’t been so attached to us sometimes happens just because we’re doing much
smaller projects. We have a live African American weekly discussion -- it’s whatever was in the news that day. And we tried what
we are calling a viewing party. We’ve done this in bars. And we had one at GBH and over 100 people showed up. They watched
the show and afterwards they just wouldn’t leave GBH. They wanted to keep talking. So, I think there are also some high-touch,
small group opportunities that are emerging for us -- as well as the more “distant utility touch”, opportunities. And I think we’re
filling in that full range.
28
3. Methods/Practices – discussion notes
- how integrity is ensured in realizing the intended outcomes of public media
1984 Wingspread Principles
Potential methods/practices for 2010 and beyond
Introduction:
• (Ensure) responsible application by professional practitioners of a free
and independent decision-making process which is ultimately accountable
to the needs and interests of all citizens.
 Operate within a system of defined values and ethics, stated
standards of fairness, honesty and accuracy, and shared
expectations of quality.
II. Our Service is Programming:
• create the climate, the policies and the sense of direction which assure
that the mission of providing high quality programming remains
paramount.
III. Credibility Is the Currency of our Programming:
• assure that our stations meet this challenge (of providing programming
that is free from undue or improper influence) in a responsible and
efficient way.
• adopt policies and procedures which enable professional management to
operate in a way which will give the public full confidence in the editorial
integrity of our programming.
IV. Many of our Responsibilities Are Grounded in Constitutional or
Statutory Law:
• be sure that the responsibilities of statutory and regulatory requirements
and restrictions are met.
• understand the legal and constitutional framework within which our
stations operate
V. We Have a Fiduciary Responsibility for Public Funds.
• develop and implement policies which can assure the public and their
chosen public officials alike that this money is well spent (funds provided
by individual and corporate contributions; and by local, state and federal
taxes)
• assure conformance to sound fiscal and management practices
• assure that the legal requirements placed on us by funding sources are
met
 Broadly engage the community; seek out informed and
experienced parties; include multiple perspectives
 Provide full transparency
- What intent and objective; what influences; what input;
what partners
- Where are you coming from? Why are you saying this?
What’s your interest in this?”
 Provide full context and background for those seeking more
(sources, additional content)
 Ensure objectivity (vet through impartial groups of people
without any personal interest or particular point of view)
 Embrace and use the language of “the public interest”
 Be a good steward of the public interest (act as trustee of
public service)
 Apply the principles of integrity in all matters (content,
platforms, processes and relationships)
 Be accountable for the integrity of all content, processes and
relationships (stand behind, vouch for)
 Adhere to the letter and spirit of regulatory and legislative
requirements
 Dealing with the embedded concept of “objectivity”
Pat Aufderheide: I am in love with the transparency stuff and I think transparency is a vehicle to get to accountability. But I don’t
know what we do about the question of articulating these ethical standards. I think that often, particularly in news, an expectation
of “balance” or “objectivity” has been a rough stand-in for fairness, honesty, accuracy -- and I just don’t think that’s going to work
in this environment.
29
3. Methods/Practices – discussion notes (continued)
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
- how integrity is ensured in realizing the intended outcomes of public media
I would love to see (objectivity) gone because I think the goal here is to provide the most durable, reliable, and trusted platform -not to ourselves claim that we are always going to act objectively. I’m not even sure if acting objectively should be a goal in many
cases.
Wick Rowland: This is going to be difficult -- probably one of the few places where we’re really going to go around and around. I
certainly share Pat’s skepticism. We talked a bit about this last time. So much of the 20th century intellectual project has been to
really attack that concept. It was kind of a late-19th, turn of the century model coming out of certain kinds of market and other
forces that was convenient. And our whole journalistic enterprise bought into it. But every working journalist knows that it’s an
impossible standard because of the subjective characteristics of one’s own personality, work and conditions.
Yet, it is there. It’s a hoary concept just lying at the heart of the attacks on journalism -- “You’re not being objective.” One way to
think about this is what do we want to arm our leaders with when they are in front of the house sub-committee on
telecommunications justifying an increase in the CPB appropriation or defending NPR in a Juan Williams kind of situation, when
they get asked the question, “Do you not believe in objectivity any longer?” What does Paula Kerger or Vivian Schiller say at that
moment? What tools have we given them in this (document)?
Pat Aufderheide: I think the problem is terrible because I think that Vivian Schiller absolutely believes that objectivity is her goal.
And I haven’t made any headway with her at all. I had a discussion with her where I said, “I don’t even understand why you want
to make that argument because you are implicitly making a much more important argument, which is that NPR every day selects
out of the welter of meaningless and confusing information that comes at people, the stuff that they think is important for people to
know for some reason. I wonder what that reason would be?”
I don’t understand how journalists can say that objectivity is a value that has primacy when every single day, they stake their
reputations on being discriminating understanders of what’s going on and selecting for you the stuff that you really should know.
And they’re in no sense objective and shouldn’t be about staking that claim. Some things really are important to know. And we
do have a set of values in this country that put some things above others. We don’t think that you should be completely objective
about whether democracy is a good thing.
Wick Rowland: The difficulty is that we just don’t have a good public discourse about the concept upon which to tag these
words. Not only do we not have a good public discourse about it, but we’re conflicted about it and don’t have a common
language to debate it, even within public broadcasting as Pat has ably demonstrated here.
 Fairness and balance
Marita Rivero: We used the language of “fairness and balance” a lot more when the Fairness Doctrine itself was in play – and
that that is really how we approach our work, I think. Overall, we hope to give a fair and balanced view of opinions around issues
of significant public focus. So, I’m wondering if that’s a direction we might go rather than the insuring objectivity.
30
3. Methods/Practices – discussion notes (continued)
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
- how integrity is ensured in realizing the intended outcomes of public media
 Intentional exclusion of terms such as fairness and objectivity in 1984
Skip Hinton: I’ll add that if you do a word search the original statement, you won’t find fair, fairness, objective, or objectivity in it.
That was intentional.
Marita Rivero: And maybe we should just accept that and accede to its wisdom.
 Trusted broker
Pat Aufderheide: I love the idea that public broadcasting could serve a role that nobody else wants to serve in the media
environment of being that trusted broker of information and of conversation about it so that there can be a safe place for genuine
disagreement and also good, safe attempts to solve the problems that people face -- whether it’s figuring out how to get remedial
statistics so that you can do the graduate course you want to do or it’s figuring out how to have a decent discussion about zoning
regulations.
 Claiming the “public interest” for public media
Wick Rowland: One of the approaches that we might take (to the objectivity question) goes back to something I was alluding to
a while ago, but is reflected here again on this right-side of page seven -- the language of the “public interest”. What I’m hearing
in the last set of comments is the thought that we need to explicitly claim some of the values that are understood, at large, to be
there in broadcasting and telecommunications content services of all kinds.
The commercial world has been allowed to pretend that they are serving them, to use the language, but really, for our purposes
(we should) state that we are going to be the legitimate vessels of trust for being sure that those values come to fruition so that
this really is the institution that has the fiduciary responsibility and takes it.
I recommend reading the recent Steven Culls Op-Ed piece in the Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/10/29/AR2010102904336.html) because it really, in effect, between the lines says, “Let’s just finish the
charade at work here. Just completely finish deregulating the private enterprise. Don’t require them to serve the public interest
because they don’t do it and it just confuses (things). But make that the burden of public broadcasting and then fund it
adequately to do it.” That, cut to the chase, is his argument. That would be a huge public policy advance were there to be any
real support for it. There are all kinds of problems associated with making it happen, but it really would change the game if that
were the way we were arguing before Congress.
Pat Aufderheide: It would be great. But one of the problems is that this group knows that working against that argument is the
fact that many stations, particularly many television stations, are actually not performing the kind of role that you guys are doing
such a great job of doing. And so, you’re basically arguing for support to hypothetically do something that there’s no evidence,
that most of us want, many of us, I’m sorry, some of us don’t want to do.
31
3. Methods/Practices – discussion notes (continued)
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
- how integrity is ensured in realizing the intended outcomes of public media
Wick Rowland: I understand, and there’s quiet agreement that we have to make sure our own house is in order in that regard.
But at the macro level, the problem is that because every commercial television and radio station gets renewed by the FCC (when
have they last denied anyone?), that means they must, ipso facto, be serving the public interest. And then, we all have an
argument about that, but we don’t make it very explicit at the national level. So, what I’m looking at is the opportunity to use this
project as a way of claiming, reclaiming for us, some of those core values that presumably the American people and Congress
want.
 A combination of transparency and standards required
Quentin Hope: Out of all of this the one thing which does seem to be clear and addressable are the points around transparency.
Jerry Wareham: It is, but to tag on to Pat’s comments, that’s something that public broadcasters and journalists will have to want
to do.
One of the things we’re fighting is the priesthood. Not just ours, but the whole industry’s answer to credibility and integrity has
been, “Well, it’s because we’re totally independent, and we anoint people to be journalists, and they’re objective,” and that’s just
what doesn’t cut it anymore. And so, what transparency means and how far we’re willing to go with that is a very important
question.
Quentin Hope: It’s really a combination of the two: you can’t just have full transparency and achieve the end that you have in
mind because it still requires professional standards.
Wick Rowland: Exactly. We’re finally cutting to something that I hadn’t been able to articulate as I was reading the materials
and thinking about the last call. I think you put your finger on it. There are still some values and standards behind whatever
funding sources you accept and, presumably, there are some that we do not accept support from even if we were transparent
about them. Or maybe, if we were transparent about it, we’d be embarrassed. And so, that suggests that there are some values
that are guiding that. It isn’t just a neutral process.
Quentin Hope: Right, and at the level of the individual producer or journalist, it’s also basic standards such as you do verify facts
as opposed to, “I’m transparent about the fact that I have no facts” -- if you want to be truly useful. Otherwise there’s a slippery
slope of transparency being used an excuse or a justification to do whatever you want.
32
4. Constituency Relationships – discussion notes
- who is involved in realizing public media’s outcomes and what working relationships are needed
1984 Wingspread Principles
Potential constituency relationships for 2010 and beyond
Audiences
Users:
• be judged by public broadcasting’s programming
service and the value of that service to its
audiences
 Share own perspectives and knowledge
Citizens and policy makers:
 Hold public media accountable to these principles
• educate both citizens and public policymakers to
the importance of the fact that our programming
is free from undue or improper influence
Trustees, legislators and funders:
• inform and educate those whose position or
influence may affect the operation of our
licensee.
• resist the inappropriate use of otherwise
legitimate oversight procedures to distort the
programming process which funding supports
Governing boards:
• Be the custodians of their institutions' fiscal
reputation
• Be the final guardians of public broadcasting's
editorial integrity and its reputation in the
marketplace of ideas
 Contribute informed content
 Provide feedback, questions and criticism
Content partners and providers:
 Share-in public media’s intended outcomes
 Be equally transparent and accountable
Other media organizations:
 Be equally clear and transparent with own principles
Funders:
 Share-in public medias intended outcomes
 Be transparent in interests and intents
 Respect public media’s methods and practices of integrity
“Regulators”:
 Support public medias intended outcomes
 Be transparent in interests and intentions in setting directions and establishing
boundaries for public media
 Respect public media’s methods and practices of integrity
 Distinctions among “regulators”
Pat Aufderheide: The word gatekeepers may be more helpful than “regulators” in the sense that some of the entities we’re
talking about are not formal regulators, and regulators are often associated with governments.
Quentin Hope: That would be good. We ought to break out whether it’s regulators or gatekeepers – and I think that governing
boards are another distinct group.
33
4. Constituency Relationships – discussion notes (continued)
- who is involved in realizing public media’s outcomes and what working relationships are needed
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
 Through-lines of transparency, accountability and respect across all relationships
Pat Aufderheide: I think we’re going to want through-lines through all of these pages -- and accountability and transparency
seem to be really important. Those seem to be guiding concepts for how you want to structure these relationships with all these
entities.
The other word that keeps coming to mind is respect, that you want users to respect each other and the mission, and you want
the same thing of all the other organizations, too. That you want respect for the project, you want people to engage in it with a
level of not nearly benefitting from it, but understanding what it is and participating in it.
 Application to underwriters
Pat Aufderheide: And this whole discussion might really help with some of the discussion about underwriting -- when corporate
funders are just doing ambush marketing and when are they finding a sympathetic cord with something that is important for them,
something they themselves are about. Like Starbucks. Starbucks actually has some idealistic goals for what a good corporation
is. Nokia, the same thing. They both have a strong sense of playing a civic role as well as making money.
34
5. Added notes on usage of and alternatives to the term
“public media”
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
 Proper usage and conceptualization of the term “public media” and “public”
Wick Rowland: I have one item that’s going to seem like a quibble at some level, but I’d be interested in other people’s thoughts
on it: the words public media. Media to me is a plural, not singular. Radio is different from television. They’re different from
newspapers, are different from magazines, are different from film. I know that in the age of convergence and interaction we’re
working in multiple platforms, but I still think each platform has different expressive characteristics, grammars, and syntax, and
skills associated with it. I sure would like to have the word public media in our documents used in a plural rather than a singular
form. Maybe I’m swimming up against the stream here.
Pat Aufderheide: Conceptually I’m totally on Wick’s side. The question to me is just how much do you want to drive people
crazy because the other thing I like to do is to make sure that people understand the public as something that there could be lots
of, like children can be a public in their school for issues that affect them in their school.
People are so used to the term “the public” as an undifferentiated mass out there that trying to think about the public as a kind of
social role that people play at times is really, really hard for them. And this issue of what are public media or what are public
media behaviors, God forbid, could somebody who is not in the public broadcasting silo be doing public media is another heart
stopping question for a lot of people.
 Doing public media; not just being public media
Pat Aufderheide: It’s been very distressing and sad for me to see what happened to the 3 D’s -- diversity, dialog, and digital. It’s
just been watered down to, “What a nice idea. Maybe we could do that sometime.” The big question to me, both for the
broadcasters and for people in their communities, is “Did you do public media today?” Not, “Are we public media? Or, “Do you
like our public media?” But who’s doing public media today? And I would love to see “do” substituted for “are”.
 Public service media
Jerry Wareham: I’ll just go all the way because Wick actually used this term just a few minutes ago -- it’s”public service media”.
That is a term that I think we ought to use much more frequently. And from listening to it, it could be public’s service media.
Pat Aufderheide: The reason that we avoided the term public service media in all the work we’ve done (at the center) is twofold. Although I agree that it really reminds people of missions, public service media is like the old European term and there’s
been such a turning against the very, very, very old-fashioned and stodgy public service media of most of Europe that I tend to
associate it with kind of a lumbering old elitist elephant.
35
5. Added notes on usage of and alternatives to the term
“public media”
11/18 call notes on
initial framing
The other thing I worry about with public service media is the word “service” because it implies we will serve you. And I think this
will be participatory, if done right, in the way that MCME, for instance, is constantly encouraging people to do. This is a
participatory exercise in which we don’t “serve” the public that watches us. We are active organizers and promoters of public
behavior, of the best public behavior.
Jerry Wareham: To your first point, I would only suggest that the word public has also been turned against even more so in this
country.
Wick Rowland: I understand the gray, old lady implications of public service media in some contexts, but I think we could refresh
that in the American environment.
It’s interesting how it just hasn’t been used -- deliberately. It was the Public Broadcasting Act and then public television, public
radio, and now, public media. The service word, I think, was probably left out for many of the reasons that you said, but it also
may be part of that confusion over the public interest issue as well, too. If it had been adopted, it might’ve brought more attention
to the need for the pillar to be bigger.
36
Notes from the 11/02 first call discussion
Summary of 1st Call Discussion
Degree of change
needed from 1984?
 Somewhere between a three and a four
1
2
3
4
5
Some clarification, Major revisions to address many
reinterpretation and broadening changes in the media
to match today’s media environment
landscape
Essential consideration?
 Defining where public media fits
 Clarity on public media’s unique value
 Change in language from “we talk, you listen”
 Recognition of a multi-platform, multi-channel environment and
curated and aggregated content
 Accountability in practice
 Recognition that the service is more than “programming”
 Recognition that our business as “community building”
One or more sets?
• One set of principles that stand amid the complexity of the new media
environment and define public media’s distinct role in the that
environment
Constituency mapping
• Overlapping and self-defined roles vs. limited and assumed roles
• Impact of other media’s principles on the public’s perception of public
media’s principles
• Transparency and accountability vs. firewalls and arms-length
relationships
Factors and forces at
play
 Amid the shift “mass media” the need remains for “organized capacity”
for providing a narrative
 Public trust is better based on transparency, accountability and
defined practices versus stated and accepted “objectivity”
 The grounding for public media’s principles must be clear and likely
more self-defined and self-asserted than statutorily prescribed
Approach for framing
the principles
• Should be outcome focused and address the new media environment
(yet still draw on the core elements from 1984)
Further note on summary
from 11/18 call:
Jerry Wareham: While I
agree that we had talked about
being more explicit and selfdefined about values and
things, (there is still) this notion
that we’re trying to create a
framework here that
establishes some legal
protection for our enterprise to
behave in a way that allows us
to exercise our integrity.
I would hope that as we go
along, you could be even more
explicit about that because I
think that’s a very important
point. And if we can sort of
drive from that perspective, I
think we’ll have a better and
more clear discussion rather
than debating issues like our
perception of public
perception.
37
1st Call discussion notes:
Objectives and output criteria
1. Draft a statement of recommended principles (guidelines) on editorial
integrity for public media, which:
- reaffirms affirms and builds a strong sense of trust and belief by users
in the integrity of the content of public media
- is clear, readily understood, meaningful and relevant to all readers
- is broadly enough conceived to prove durable and sufficiently concrete
to provide real guidance in case application sufficiently enough
articulated to provide the reasoning needed for guidance in case
application
- is mindful of existing principles and the history of application and testing
of those principles (e.g. court rulings)
- focuses on common ground and reflects a consensus view while noting
divergent views
------ takes a “station” (local public media organization) focus and perspective
- is “adoption ready” for endorsement and use by public media governing
bodies
- can be useful in defining and managing relationships with production
partners and funders.
2. Document issues considered and the key insights and perspectives of the
working group members, including divergent views where they exist.
3. Provide helpful background and support materials to provoke active thinking
and support effective communications of the principles.
Edited based on 1st call
discussions
Jerry Wareham: Throughout this
process, you’ll find me being very
cautionary about re-anything. We’re in a
new world, and I’m very cautious in this
process about us trying to carry forward
old ideas into the new world without really
getting into them.
Pat Aufderheide: I’m concerned about
the “sufficiently concrete” and how we
want to interpret that. We want to provide
people with reasoning tools. What we
don’t want to do is to provide people with
concrete and specific advice that is
situational, because it’s rigid and every
situation is different.
What happens when people get the
thumbnails, the guidelines, the rules is
that they become rule-bound and it limits
them, whereas if you can provide the
reasoning, they can take that to a wide
variety of situations and work with the
reasoning.
Pat Aufderheide: A document of
principles should stand separately from
any examples. Those examples of reallife discussion of how to apply reasoning
would exist elsewhere, for instance, on a
related website where they would not
become encrusted and they would be
able to adapt to circumstances.
38
Notes from 1st call discussion
Calibration on incoming perspectives
Q1. Using the 1984 Statement of Principles of Editorial Integrity in Public Broadcasting* as a reference
point, what degree of change is needed in the principles guiding public media’s editorial integrity?
1
Little or no change; the
principles stand intact
despite changes in the
media environment
* See appendix
2
Select, judicious updating
to address areas of truly
fundamental change
3
4
5
Some clarification,
reinterpretation and
broadening to match
today’s media landscape
Major revisions to address
many changes in the
media environment
Complete reconceptualization and reframing given
a new and very different
media environment
Jackie Jones
Wick Rowland
Marita Rivero
Dave Edwards
Jerry Wareham
Pat Aufderheide
Dave Edwards: There have been so many changes in the media environment that – while the core bedrock principles remain – we
have to be sensitive to the fact that we are operating in a much different environment than we used to.
I come back to the Wingspread principles as the core, and I think everything builds from there. I’m not ready to throw those away.
Jackie Jones: I actually think the principles are sound. I think the problem is the application of the principles. In drafting new
principles, how do we beef up the accountability part, which to me is where the problem comes in. For example, the statement that
the mission of public broadcasting is to “bring to Americans the highest accomplishments of our society and civilization” and all this
rich diversity and blah, blah, blah, I think that should be a guiding principle. But can we check everything on the schedule against
that standard? No, we can't. I think that’s the problem.
A lot of these things are pretty visionary in terms of how they’re stated and I think they’re sound. I think where we have a real
disconnect is the kind of material that we’re actually talking about. So, my question about a lot of this is: Are we trying to come up
with language that justifies what we have or are we trying to actually establish guidelines that lead us into the future?
Jerry Wareham: It’s necessary to make major revisions because of the many changes in the media environment but more so
because of the language of the existing principles. (see Q2 response.)
Pat Aufderheide: I don't think there’s anything wrong with the former principles for a mass media era, but I don't think they work now.
Wick Rowland: I tend to see it somewhere in the middle. There are some verities, some core principles that I hope we would agree
on in the conduct of public discourse that we’re responsible for.
Marita Rivero: There are some core things – trustee of public service, our credibility, our editorial integrity – that are what we are
certainly building into what we do and that defines us. There are other things though that have to do with the mass media question
that I’m expecting we probably will talk about a bit more and might explicate differently (e.g. our ability to aggregate smaller
audiences into still a mass).
I feel the principles that are guiding us as we move into those worlds (multi-platforms, multi-channel, curation, aggregation) should
remain our traditional and very strong ones.
39
Calibration on incoming perspectives (Q2)
Notes from 1st call discussion
Q2. What do you see as the essential considerations or factors that must be addressed in drafting
principles to guide public media’s editorial integrity.
 Defining where public media fits
Dave Edwards: There’s been a dramatic upheaval in the way consumers think of the media, particularly the news media -and the fact that everybody has their own press now, so where does public media fit into this? I think there are more
moving pieces than there have ever been.
 Clarity on public media’s unique value
Marita Rivero: We need to understand where our unique value lies and what the guidelines are for that as we move
forward with that unique value --- This is who we are. This is our stake in the ground. These are the principles which guide
what we do while acknowledging that there’s much around us that’s changing and that we are involved with to one degree
or another.
 Change in language from “we talk, you listen”
Jerry Wareham: The entire framework for the articulation of the current principles – set the principles aside – the language
that is used and the structure, is a sort of, “We talk, you listen,” sort of framework. That’s fundamentally what has changed.
Everybody talks and everybody listens, and we’ve got to get used to that fact. We have to change the language – not
necessarily the principles but the language.
 Recognition of a multi-platform, multi-channel environment and curated and aggregated content
Marita Rivero: We are looking at different platforms and distribution channels and content types and somehow, we need to
acknowledge that. We obviously have the capability of curating and aggregating content we did not produce and that’s at
the heart of what we’re talking about here – content we did not produce but still we can stand behind, through whatever
processes we’ve created. I think it’s in some of those areas, when it has to do with how we are aggregating, how we are
presenting content, where we will find some changes.
 Accountability in practice
Jackie Jones: An essential consideration is accountability in practice in terms of the editorial integrity
40
Calibration on incoming perspectives (Q2 continued)
Notes from 1st call discussion
 Recognition that the service is more than “programming”
Pat Aufderheide: I don't think your service is programming anymore. I think that if a station is going to play a useful role in a
community and in a network of community-based stations, it is playing the role of brokering media for a vital public culture and
brokering it in lots of different ways. So, I think the question is, “How do you structure the definition of that honest broker role
and are you going to specify the different kinds of roles that you could play?”
I do think your obligation is different when you’re originating materials than when you are providing, for instance, a forum or
playing a “pro-am” role. You’re making different claims for your ability to vouch for that material. But presumably, you’re doing
all the different things you do because you have this underlying commitment to being the essential, the sine qua non broker for
vital public culture. Without you guys, there is no anchor really for a culturally and informationally rich public culture. I’m unlike
some people in that I really think that all the programming that public television does is in that basket. I don't think you should
segment off, say, kids or educational from the idea of creating an ideal public culture because I think that the type of work that
public broadcasting does at its best has that angle on it. It treats kids as responsible citizens of their own street, their own
community, their own family. And that’s different from what Nickelodeon does.
Jackie Jones: I think I agree with Pat. But I actually feel that what the guidelines say is that the role of public broadcasting is
programming and it is bringing media, in all of its rich diversity to the American people, and I think that’s still true. I think playing
the role of being a broker or playing the role of being a broadcaster or producer – those are distinctions within the definition of
basically distributing or being a vehicle to which that content reaches the American public. I think the primary service is still
content, and I don't think that’s changed. I agree that the language can be updated, but I don't think the basic function has
changed. I don't think it was written as a one-way document, even though it was written in a one-way era.
Pat: The content is still the currency. We’re talking about media. That hasn’t changed. There’s an emphasis on engagement
and other roles, but the reality is that all of those roles depend on the delivery of media content. So, the primary service is still
content. Now we would call it content instead of programming, but it’s the same thing.
Jackie: I do think that media is at the core of what all public broadcasting is brokering, especially for stations. The many things
that stations do unified around the notion of brokering media for that public culture. So, most of what stations do deliver,
currently, is not made by them. I think increasingly that will be true -- curating and matching and doing pro-am co-creation will all
be aspects of that brokering role. But what they are brokering is the media. They are mediators.
 Recognition that our business as “community building”
Jerry Wareham: While I recognize we’re in the media business and the content business, I agree with Pat that our role is – or
our opportunity, if not our actual role – is much, much greater than that.
In a very real sense, I think we’re in the community-building business, not with the sense of directing but in the sense of
facilitating. And I think that happens with – if we want to call it media – it’s all forms of media. It’s not just content. It’s all forms
of mediated activity. Here we talk about that meaning radio and television and the internet and fixed media and even what one
of our senior directors calls full frontal media, real people standing up in front of other people and talking.
41
Calibration on incoming perspectives (Q3)
Notes from 1st call discussion
Q3. Is there one set of “principles” for editorial integrity or multiple sets? If multiple, what are the
differentiating factors, e.g., commercial vs. noncommercial? content type? platform or format?
distribution channel?
 One set of principles that stand amid the complexity of the new media environment and define public
media’s distinct role in the that environment
Dave Edwards: I don't think there should be more than one set. But I think there are different flavors of the way that
will probably look. For example, just dealing with what NPR is focused on in the last couple of weeks, I think that
illustrates the fact that the way journalists are even approaching their jobs these days has changed dramatically. I
teach a class for a private women’s college in the area, and their feedback to me about the way journalists should
behave is very different from the way I would’ve described when I was in J school 100 million years ago.
•Jackie Jones: There should be one unifying set of principles.
•Jerry Wareham: It is possible to have one overarching set of principles for editorial integrity but I think, as others
have suggested, in application there has to be differentiation to accommodate the fact that we no longer talk and
people listen.
•Wick Rowland: Ideally, of course, you would like a common set. It’s easier to work with. It’s something you can
come back to and where you’ve got a common language or at least the image thereof. When you get into multiple
sets that might reflect different funding structures, or in the case of public media institutions, different licensing or
ownership structures, then you’re going to start spreading it out quite broadly and I don't know where that ends.
•Marita Rivero: I agree with Wick’s response. Simple and strong is best.
•Skip Hinton: If there is not a single concise statement of principles – and maybe we should lead with principles of
integrity before we add editorial – we’re going be hard-pressed to claim to be a distinct profession.
42
Initial mapping for discussion
and development
Constituency mapping
Note: certain constituents have multiple roles and appear multiple places and
consequently have relationships that are not captured in this mapping
FCC
CPB
Set legal or institutional
requirements and boundaries
Institutional
licensees
Funders
Corporations/
businesses
Licensees
Public:
underserved
audiences
“Regulators”
State
Governments
Individuals
IRS
1 Overlapping and
self-defined roles
•Provide
funding
•May set
funding
conditions
•May have
funding
expectations
3 Firewalls or
transparency and
accountability
Foundations
Editorial
Principles
of
Public Media
Organizations
Users
•Use content
•Form
expectations for
integrity
•Define basis of
trust
•Have own
“principles”
•Shape pubic
perception and
expectations for
“principles”
•Provide content
•Partner on production
•May have own “principles”
Content
partners and providers
Governmental
units
NPOs
Other
public media
organizations
Public:
exiting audiences
Individual
“producers”
(e.g., bloggers,
freelancers)
Government
officials
NPO
organizations &
officials
Private industry
organizations &
officials
Commercial
Other
media
organizations
Other
noncommercial
Advocacy
Individual users
2 Influence of
other’s principles
(UGC)
43
Constituency map notes
Notes from 1st call discussion
1. Overlapping and self-defined roles vs. limited and assumed roles
Jackie Jones: There are so many overlapping roles -- like with the content partners and providers and the funders, for
example, some of those are the same people. Then in terms of the end-users, some of those are the same as shown at the
front – there’s just a lot of overlap. When I think of the end-user, I’m thinking about the public.
Pat Aufderheide: (This) goes back to this question of how far we’ve moved from a strictly mass media environment.
Quentin Hope: Where roles were clear and defined and you could define them yourself in many ways.
Dave Edwards: Well, there were fewer people trying to define them.
Quentin Hope: … which gave a lot more latitude for those who had the franchise.
Dave Edwards: Right
Wick Rowland: The other part was that there was also a greater deference to the existing structures as well. Almost by
definition what we have now is a potentially anarchic system in which everyone is an expert and will demand a hearing.
2. Impact of other media’s principles on the public’s perception of public media’s principles
Dave Edwards: My eye keeps being drawn to the lower right quadrant of other media organizations. There’s been so much
change here. We have to recognize the way other media organizations are behaving, how they view us, what our connected
roles are. We’re not operating in a vacuum. We probably never have, but it seems to me that the general public looks to us
in one way but other media organizations are behaving in a different way. Fox, and MSNBC and CNN have their own sort of
guiding principles. Does that impact the way people look at us?
44
Constituency map notes (continued)
Notes from 1st call discussion
3. Transparency and accountability vs. firewalls and arms-length relationships
Dave Edwards: I think a lot about the firewall of the funders. So much has changed in the media environment. When we
talk about the firewall that protects content from funding decisions, is that wall as solid as it used to be industry-wide and
how is it perceived? Just in recent weeks I’ve had discussions with people about some funding situations where a year or
so ago I thought that people sort of embraced it when I talked about the firewall. Now people are sort of suspicious that that
wall even exists. I think there are people who just don't believe its rhetoric.
Jerry Wareham: Not only that, I think there are some people who don’t think it’s important. It’s just simply no longer
relevant to a whole generation. As an example, at confab convened by Ford about health information there were major
health institutions and public broadcasters there, and this whole notion came up. Here you’ve got nonprofit healthcare
institutions that have in their mission statement to educate the public about health information and then on the other side of
the table are public broadcasters saying, “Well, we can't let you be involved in the content.” The end result was that the
healthcare institutions said, “We don't need you. We’ve got our own production capability, thank you. It’s just as good,
maybe better, than yours and we can distribute it ourselves.” Now, is that advancing health information in our country and at
what cost? I think those are very real issues.
Jackie Jones: End-users are skeptical about its existence but I think people do care and want to know if the information that
they get is commercially motivated. The editorial firewall is a very important part of the discussion and what continues to
make public media so important and relevant. The integrity of the editorial has to do with it being accepted from a variety of
different sources and vetted by sort of an theoretically impartial group of people who don’t have any personal interest in any
particular point of view. That is lost in the general media landscape, but it’s not unimportant. It’s sort of the bedrock of this
whole thing.
Pat Aufderheide: I would steer away from the word “firewall” and steer more towards a word like “integrity” or
“accountability” because I think they are important words. That gets around the problem that I believe Jerry was raising with
the very good example of the healthcare providers who were stymied. What people want is not to know that there is an
arms length from any kind of influence but to know under what influences was something made and with what input and with
what goal. So, things like transparency and identification of funders and being able to articulate with what intent was this
made, with what partners who want what. I realize that’s kind of stirring media literacy challenges at public media but that, it
seems to me, is the emerging way to get accountability. It’s not to create rigid structures where you don't make contact with
people you might need to make contact with. It goes back to this question of how far we’ve moved from a strictly mass
media environment.
Jackie: I agree with that. Forget the firewall.
45
Factors and forces at play assessment
Initial and illustrative listing for
discussion, development and focus
 What factors have emerged or changed since the 1984 principles?
 Which factors truly matter in defining or redefining editorial principles?
Industry structure
Market structure
(technology and regulation)
(players, strategies and dynamics)
Distribution and access expansion:
 globalization of distribution
 multiplication of platforms
 reversal of “scarcity”
 Increase in “alternatives”
 ease of digital replication and sharing
“Deregulation” of media accountabilities
 abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine
 rise of largely unregulated media channels
“Democratization” of content creation and
distribution:
 lower production costs across media
 cheap distribution via the WWW
 easy digital coping, editing and repackaging
 proliferation of easy, affordable content
creation and “publishing” applications
“Socialization” of content creation and
distribution:
 Development of social networking sites and
applications
 Interlinking of social media sites and
applications
Disruption of established business models:
 Loss/diminution of market franchises
 Displacement of “inefficient” advertising buys
Access positioning and restriction:
 search engines, positioning (SEO) and filtering
 differentiated ISP service levels
 Fee for access and use services
“Instantaneous” publishing and dissemination:
 24/7 news cycles
 editorial process compression/reduction
 social media dissemination
 advocacy network activation
Rise of individual and collective media:
 personal news and views publication
 personal “re-publishing” of others content
 user contributed content
 crowd sourcing
Rise/return of partisan and opinion-driven media:
 defined and unified perspective
 use of news as a platform for commentary
 assertion of objectivity and accuracy
 “sports-style” presentation
Drive for greater user engagement to reestablish
franchise and firm value:
 share of users’ time and attention
 brand reputation and loyalty enhancement
 call-to-action reach and effectiveness
 financial return (higher CPM, funder appeal)
Changing local media roles and players:
 Shifts in community roles of public broadcasters
 Decline of local commercial media content
 Rise of “citizen journalists” and “community
journalism” enterprises
 Focus on hyper-local focus by national players
Shifts in public media’s funding mix:
 Decline of government support as % of total
 Emphasis on “philanthropic” giving
Social dynamics
Diversifying and divergent basis for “trust”:
 Defined and declared principles of
objectivity, impartiality and fairness
 Personal professional standards and
practices
 Transparency and full disclosure
 Community editing (wiki)
 Personal referral (Facebook “like”)
 Social network alignment
 Belief system alignment
Shifting perceptions and looser distinctions
of traditional concepts and boundaries:
 “attempted fairness” vs. “all news is
biased”
 “public service” vs. “insider politics”
 “view from nowhere” vs. “where I’m coming
from”
 “reporting & analysis” vs. “personal
expression and interpretation”
 “user generated” vs. “professionally
produced” content
 “noncommercial” vs. “non-profit” vs.
“intrusion free”
Changing perceptions and expectations of
“quality”:
 Importance of “voice & tone” as well as
content
 Editorial process standards and rigor
46
Factors and forces at play notes
Notes from 1st call discussion
 Amid the shift “mass media” the need remains for “organized capacity” for providing a narrative
Pat Aufderheide: This is no longer a mass media environment, these are local organizations that play a connecting and a
networking role and a brokering role with significant media for public culture. There are many more relationships all grounded in
the same fundamental goal.
Wick Rowland: It’s fashionable and easy just to say, “Well, mass media is dead, period, move on.” I think that’s a big mistake. I
would be careful not to overstate that. Yes, much of the existing structures are breaking down or transforming and so on, but I
think we are going to have our feet in both worlds for a much longer period of time.
Jerry Wareham: I don't think as a civilization we are giving up on the notion that we expect some people to tell us stories, to
provide narratives, and to do so at some length and depth. The more you ask for that, the more you’re implying the need for
organized capacity to do that, particularly in a complex audio/visual interactive world. The image sometimes is that we’re moving
completely to a totally flat system of anybody and everybody as both the originator and the editor and the stories we tell are going
to be those that work well on a PDA for about 90 seconds. But to say that that’s all there will be and everything else is dead – I
think that’s a little premature.
Wick Rowland: There’s a strong critique in the way we use those terms – “mass communication” and “mass media.” It’s the old
kind of Marxist worry about mass society and being manipulated by forces of capital and ownership and so on. You can think of it
in ways other than that though. It’s the notion that a few people maybe needed to do things for a larger number of people. You
need a group of renaissance artists to create a sort of level of painting and representation that is of interest to, and speaks to, the
culture of the larger population of the 15th and 16th Centuries. Sure, we can do all the questions as to the power and the
ownership and control mechanisms and the role of the church – and God knows we could go on and on and on in that – but I think
you get the point that we do empower artists and writers and musicians who have merit to do some things that speak to the rest of
us and are resonant and so on.
There is a mass communication characteristic to that somewhat irrespective to the power and ownership and funding structures.
What I’m trying to get at is that you’re going to have some kind of organized content creation that aspires to some high level of
expression.
47
Factors and forces at play notes (continued)
Notes from 1st call discussion
 Public trust is better based on transparency, accountability and defined practices versus stated and accepted
“objectivity”
Marita Rivero: Our former position (in a mass media environment) was as the sole voice, sole arbiter, sole trustworthy
purveyor of news. It’s an important factor to people. They just don't trust one organization to give them everything. I think
people might be more cynical. Anybody’s analysis is open to a bit of question rather than unquestioned use of content. In that
circumstance, we’re not going to be the sole provider.
Pat Aufderheide: This is where I’m stressing transparency, which I think has become terrifically important to people,
especially to people who believe that a claim to objectivity is just bogus and uninteresting. What they would like to know are
things like, “Is that your real name? Where are you coming from? Why are you saying this? What’s your interest in this?”
Actually, it’s a fabulous opportunity for public broadcasting as you can really use the language of the public interest in a way
that has been impermissible for 20 years. (It was corny. It was like, “Oh, well, we don't do that. We’re providing a service,
helping your children, but we’re not gonna go all Carter on you.”)
Marita Rivero: That takes me back to the earlier thing (about the language of the principles) where I think you can use the
language but if there isn’t the transparency and there isn’t real accountability at the end of the day, you just replicate the same
model you have with the same language.
Jackie Jones: I agree.
Dave Edwards: It makes sense.
Wick Rowland: Now you’re kind of delving into one of the great sort of arguments of the philosophy and epistemology of the
20th Century which is the notion of multiple realities and perceptions. The entire journalistic cannon, the objectivity balance
and partiality and so on is built on a very old technological and economic model that we know by definition is changing
dramatically underneath our feet and all around us. Yet at the same time, while we can parse that out and critique it, what do
we mean by objectivity? There still is something at the core here about a practice of journalism and a practice of doing news
and conducting public discourse – the hues to some sense of proper values, ethics, fairness, trying to deal with all sides of
issues in a self-conscious way.
That then implicates the whole question of hierarchies, of merit and control, editorial oversight, and so on, which is threatening
to be swept away. So, you can understand it intellectually as sort of almost a moot issue at one level, and then on the other
hand, we still do have a leg or more in that kind of traditional concern about doing something at a relatively high standard of
quality.
48
Factors and forces at play notes (continued)
Notes from 1st call discussion
 The grounding for public media’s principles must be clear and likely more self-defined and self-asserted than
statutorily prescribed
Ted Krichels : One of the issues for discussion is the notion of responsibilities being grounded in constitutional statutory law. (In 1984) we
didn’t actually fully succeed as we know from history. Going forward, it’s not at all clear that that will be the case even to the degree which may
be the case today, just given the different platforms and potentially less regulation around some of them. To me, that opens the question as to
how much of our responsibility actually would be grounded there.
Skip: Hinton: What we ended up coming up with (in 1984) was a realization that it was going to be hard to pin totally on a constitutional basis
and we instead decided we had to stake the high ground on principles and integrity and then build down from that on a regulatory or
administrative basis. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has upheld that reasoning several times.
The conclusion we reached was that the first amendment was not fully relevant for us and rather than the communications act, we looked higher
up to the commerce clause which was the constitutional justification for the communications act. So, we sought our constitutional protections
not in the first amendment but in the constitution itself in that clause. That by its nature hinges to the license. That’s why I’ve been sitting in the
back saying, “Guys, don't walk away from your license just yet. That’s the cornerstone of your relevance.” But that is exactly what we
determined and is exactly the part of it that the Supreme Court has upheld on a couple of instances.
We went in hoping to find a first amendment construct and we walked away with the realization that there was no getting around the fact that the
first amendment is applicable to protection of individuals from government action. … Many times, when we say we’re working under the
protection of the first amendment as journalists, we in fact are working under the protection of the commerce clause.
Wick Rowland: I think the dilemma for us here – what this reveals is that there is in our water and in our culture a kind of freedom of
expression, journalistic integrity assumption I think that we have. Skip is raising an important question about how it may be more tenuous than
we realize, but I think it would really – if we just had this conversation in front of all the producers in the system, just now, locally and nationally,
there’d be a hue and cry.
Skip Hinton: That’s why it’s so important when we get into these things about it being public forum because the legal classification of a public
forum ties into all this. Again, that’s why I think there seems to be a recognition that has been leading to this that the common acceptance of
principles of integrity are a characterization of us as a profession. From that then individual organizations can build in policies and procedures
that may vary but are at least consistent with the principles.
Quentin Hope: To loop back, Ted, to where you started on the last conversation about responsibility. I’m taking from (this conversation) that
the definition of responsibility now needs to be more self-asserted and self-adopted and not reliant on any statutory or other legal framework. It
ought to stand on its own as assertion.
Ted Krichels : Yes, I think I would agree with that statement. I still think this whole issue about where our protections are is very important,
whether that’s a principal or not I’m not so clear. But I think we need to ground them. Yes, I would agree. I think we should do them because
we believe in them.
Pat Aufderheide: I think, again, this is a real opportunity to clearly identify public broadcasting as a great ally to citizens in all of their aspects of
public life and not as a government agency or a government-assisted agency -- not because you are mandated to do this but because you have
an affirmative and exciting and essential role to play in relationship to people in the area of their lives that is probably least well served, their
public lives.
Note: These are excerpts from a more detailed conversation at the end of the call than included further background on the legal standings and court
rulings related to the 1984 Wingspread principles.
49
Notes from 1st call discussion
Principle drafting focus and approach
“Statement” based
“Constituency” based
“Outcome” based
Declaration of position*:
Principles defined and organized
by relevant constituency, e.g.:
Description of a desired state or
outcomes with principles linked
to realizing them, e.g.:
• We are Trustees of a Public
Service
• Our Service is Programming
• Credibility is the Currency of
our Programming
• Many of our Responsibilities
Are Grounded in
Constitutional or Statutory
Law
 Users (public)
 Content partners and
providers
 Funders
 Regulators
_
?
 Accurately informed public
 Constructive community
dialogue
 Understanding of diversity of
experience and perspective
_
_
• We have a Fiduciary
Responsibility for Public
Funds
Dave Edwards: I like the way it’s laid out here because it moves us from one column to the next. It needs to be fleshed out,
particularly when we talk about the constituency and what the outcomes might be. Obviously, it needs much more information,
much more detail, but it grounds us back to where we started in ’84 and actually principles that really guided our industry well
before ’84.
Jerry Wareham: There may be a framework that’s more outcome oriented and language that sort of gets us away from what
people automatically think of as a passive programming process.
Dave: Let me endorse that. I’ve been thinking a lot about that because I think we want to create a document here that stands
the test of time. As most of us look at our organizations, two, three, four, five years from now, we are seeing ourselves more
fully integrated in the community, being leaders, being directly involved in community initiatives. So, I like the idea of taking a
look at this from an outcome point of view. It gives us that flexibility.
* 1984 Wingspread Conference Statement of Principles of Editorial Integrity in Public Broadcasting
50
Source: Editorial Integrity for Public Media
website: http://pmintegrity.org/principles.cfm
Appendix:
Statement of Principles of Editorial Integrity in Public Broadcasting (1984)
The Wingspread Conference on Editorial Integrity held in 1984, was convened in an attempt to clarify the First Amendment rights and
editorial independence of government funded public broadcasting. The results of the Conference states these five Principles of
Editorial Integrity which are essential to the policies of public broadcasting organizations.
•
We are Trustees of a Public Service
•
Our Service is Programming
•
Credibility is the Currency of our Programming
•
Many of our Responsibilities Are Grounded in Constitutional or Statutory Law
•
We have a Fiduciary Responsibility for Public Funds *
The statement was later published in proceedings of the conference, Â Editorial Integrity in Public Broadcasting, published by the
National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) formerly (SECA), which facilitated the conference.
Statement of Principles of Editorial Integrity in Public Broadcasting
The mission of public broadcasting is to bring to Americans the highest accomplishments of our society and civilization in all of its rich
diversity, to permit American talent to fulfill the potential of the electronic media to educate and inform, and to provide opportunities for
the diverse groupings of the American people to benefit from a pattern of programming unavailable from other sources.
No one is more important to the fulfillment of public broadcasting's mission than the men and women of the boards of trustees of the
licensee stations. They are custodians of their institutions' fiscal reputation, a currency necessary to acquire support from those
whose taxes and donations make public broadcasting possible. They are also the final guardians of public broadcasting's editorial
integrity and its reputation in the marketplace of ideas, where reputation is legal tender.
Editorial integrity in public broadcasting programming means the responsible application by professional practitioners of a free and
independent decision-making process which is ultimately accountable to the needs and interests of all citizens.
In order to assure that programs meet the standards of editorial integrity the public has a right to expect, the following five principles
and guidelines establish a foundation for trustee action. The principles and guidelines also form a basic standard by which the
services of a public broadcasting licensee can be judged. At the same time, they form a basis for evaluating all aspects of a public
broadcasting station's governance, from enabling legislation to the policy positions of the licensee board. The ultimate goal of the
principles and guidelines is to assist public broadcasting trustees in fulfilling their vital role in this important public service.
51
Statement of Principles of Editorial Integrity in Public Broadcasting (cont.)
I. We Are Trustees of a Public Service.
Public broadcasting was created to provide a wide range of programming services of the highest professionalism and quality which
can educate, enlighten and entertain the American public, its audience and source of support. It is a noncommercial enterprise,
reflecting the worthy purpose of the federal and state governments to provide education and cultural enrichment to their citizens.
As trustees of this public service, part of our job is to educate all citizens and public policymakers to our function, and to assure that
we can certify to all citizens that station management responsibly exercises the editorial freedom necessary to achieve public
broadcasting's mission effectively.
II. Our Service is Programming.
The purpose of public broadcasting is to offer its audience public and educational programming which provides alternatives in quality,
type and scheduling. All activities of a public broadcasting licensee exist solely to enhance and support excellent programs. No matter
how well other activities are performed, public broadcasting will be judged by its programming service and the value of that service to
its audiences.
As trustees, we must create the climate, the policies and the sense of direction which assure that the mission of providing high quality
programming remains paramount.
III. Credibility Is the Currency of our Programming.
As surely as programming is our purpose, and the product by which our audiences judge our value, that judgment will depend upon
their confidence that our programming is free from undue or improper influence. Our role as trustees includes educating both citizens
and public policymakers to the importance of this fact and to assuring that our stations meet this challenge in a responsible and
efficient way.
As trustees, we must adopt policies and procedures which enable professional management to operate in a way which will give the
public full confidence in the editorial integrity of our programming.
IV. Many of our Responsibilities Are Grounded in Constitutional or Statutory Law.
Public broadcasting stations are subject to a variety of statutory and regulatory requirements and restrictions. These include the
federal statute under which licensees must operate, as well as other applicable federal and state laws. Public broadcasting is also
cloaked with the mantle of First Amendment protection of a free press and freedom of speech.
As trustees we must be sure that these responsibilities are met. To do so requires us to understand the legal and constitutional
framework within which our stations operate, and to inform and educate those whose position or influence may affect the operation of
our licensee.
52
Statement of Principles of Editorial Integrity in Public Broadcasting (cont.)
V. We Have a Fiduciary Responsibility for Public Funds.
Public broadcasting depends upon funds provided by individual and corporate contributions; and by local, state and federal taxes.
Trustees must therefore develop and implement policies which can assure the public and their chosen public officials alike that this
money is well spent.
As trustees, we must assure conformance to sound fiscal and management practices. We must also assure that the legal
requirements placed on us by funding sources are met. At the same time, we must resist the inappropriate use of otherwise legitimate
oversight procedures to distort the programming process which such funding supports.
Additional notes:
Adoption of these Principles by licensees has been important in court cases in which the programming decisions have been
challenged.
The journalistic nature of the enterprise, as supported by adherence to professional standards, also is instrumental in avoiding the
conclusion that the licensee has created a public forum of some type. In short, the exercise of journalistic judgment helps preserve
editorial discretion in law, and well-articulated professional standards can provide the necessary documentation of the principles
underlying such judgment. **
Because some litigation has been influenced in our favor based on licensee's adoption of Principles of Editorial Integrity, we
should not ignore them as we enter into new media.
I'm not sure how much value, if any, the Wingspread work will have for this project. But I remain convinced that we must not forget
the imperative to use the Communications Act and the legitimacy of the FCC license as the cornerstone and the link to services on
other platforms. Failing to do so will open too many doors that will subsequently challenge our claims to a role in "public media." ***
* Wingspread conference 1984
** Freedom of Expression in Public Broadcasting Robert Corn-Revere 2002
*** Skip Hinton, President National Educational Telecommunications Association; Comments on The Wingspread Conference Relevance in
2010
53
Appendix:
Working group members and contact information
Pat Aufderheide
Professor and Director
Center for Social Media, School of Communication
American University
Washington, D.C.
Email: paufder@american.edu
Phone: (202) 885-2069
Malcolm Brett
Director of Broadcasting and Media Innovations
Wisconsin Public Broadcasting
Email: brett@wpt.org
Phone: (608) 263-9598
Dave Edwards
Director and General Manager
WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio
Email: dedward@uwum.edu
Phone (414) 270-1100
Jacquie Jones
Executive Director
National Black Programming Consortium
Email: jacquie@nbpc.tv
Phone: (212) 234-8200
Marita Rivero
Vice President and General Manager
WGBH-TV and Radio
Boston, MA
Email: marita_rivero@wgbh.org
Phone: 617-300-2405
Wick Rowland
President and CEO, KBDI-TV
Denver, CO
Email: wrowland@kbdi.org
Phone: (303) 296-1212 x 5037
Jerry Wareham
President, Idea Stream
Cleveland, Ohio
Email: jwareham@wviz.org
Phone: (216) 739-3850
Quentin Hope
Email: quentin@hope.name
Phone: (303)-748-9645 (cell)
54