The US public broadcasting system, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the major networks PBS and NPR, was founded to preserve an island of public interest broadcasting in an overall media landscape increasingly characterized by advertising-supported, meaningless entertainment. Early efforts to protect the system from political pressures have never proved completely effective, however, and generations of conservative politicians have used funding cuts and board appointments as a way of exerting influence.
The result today is a TV network which has become overreliant on commercial "underwriters" and programming appealing to upperclass donors. NPR's news programs, while supporting much high-quality journalism, have also adopted many of the bad habits of establishment political reporting, such as an overreliance on official sources and center-right DC think-tanks.
