Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was created in 1969 by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) both to interconnect local noncommercial television stations and to procure, schedule, and distribute programming to them. Comprising around 350 member stations, PBS has functioned as one node in the U.S. public media ecosystem, though it frequently has been positioned as a synecdoche for the sector on whole. Over the course of its history, public affairs programming has been [Page 1337]central to the mission of U.S. public television; it was founded to offer clear expressions of American diversity, as a forum for debate, and to provide a voice for otherwise unheard groups. While PBS has played an important role in expanding the civic function of televisual journalism, it simultaneously has ...