Looking for a public radio research entity.
February 19, 2016 1:36 PM Subscribe
Is there a college or university or blogger or non-profit (other than a CPB or NPR affiliated organization) that examines the operation or behavior of public radio stations? Not necessarily another news organization but something along the lines of the Electronic Freedom Foundation - like a watchdog (other than itself) that insures its coverage is fair and its function is ethical? The publication "Current" says it is independent from public radio as "Stars and Stripes" says it is independent from the military. Are there others?
I don't know of a watchdog organization specifically devoted to public radio, but I thought of a couple of media outlets that might be helpful to you. Transom.org is a web site devoted to radio storytelling and has sometimes covered ethical and business concerns of public radio organizations. For example, this interview considers the mission and purpose of public radio. I might as well also mention On the Media, a WNYC radio show and thus only indirectly associated with NPR, as being one of the best watchdogs for public media and media in general. They've covered public radio copiously. Forgive me if these are too far afield from what you are looking for.
posted by reren at 3:29 PM on February 19, 2016
posted by reren at 3:29 PM on February 19, 2016
FAIR (FAIR.org) does an okay job of this but I don't think there is any comprehensive organisation that publicly at least does anything like this activity. It may be possible there is a right wing organisation which handles this. I will ask my NPR/CPB friends if they know of groups. My final suggestion is to look for FCC complaints about NPR/pub caster stations. See who files the complaints, you may be able to establish patterns.
posted by parmanparman at 3:58 PM on February 19, 2016
posted by parmanparman at 3:58 PM on February 19, 2016
I'm not completely clear on your definition of "public radio" or "public radio station," so it might be important to clarify. There's often a lot of confusion about what it means and the organizational structures that underlie it.Forgive me if this is remedial for you, but it might be helpful to someone searching on your question in future either way.
Public radio is made up of different entities - it's not one source of content. There are independent public radio stations (such as some of the major university stations), community radio stations which can be started by community organizations that meet the criteria for a license, member-supported stations, etc. Most of these are public, noncommercial stations and the requirement for a license is that content be educational (not necessarily accurate, or news-oriented; just something with educational value to the community). They're all independent organizations, managed and funded separately.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a body created by legislation to support public radio in the United States. CPB channels what little funding is left from government sources to provide basic services to the sector (such as legal services and some licensing fees). But CPB does no programming. It does grant money to organizations that produce programming that may eventually air on a public station, but public stations are all considered independent, and the CPB doesn't dictate to anyone what they carry.
Public radio stations program for themselves. Those stations also pay the fees to carry programs produced by content-producing organizations. NPR is one such content producer. PRI is another, American Radio Exchange another, American Public Media, the BBC, the CBC, etc. These are all separate organizations that have no formal links with one another - but one local public radio organization may carry shows from all of them, plus their own originally produced content, or content pulled from smaller organizations or right off an exchange site like Transom or Public Radio Exchange. There is a decent analogy to a hometown newspaper, where some content will be generated as original reporting by the local staff, whereas other content might come from a wire service like the Associated Press or Reuters, and syndicated columns and comics from a syndicating company. Responsibility for programming rests with the local station. If the programming is local, presumably local audiences would be the ones in the position of policing the content and accuracy of the station's programming. The appropriate body to complain to about programming that originates locally is the station programming committee or program director. If the station belongs to a university or other organization, obviously the university and its board have some responsibility too, though press freedoms will apply.
At the next level, the local station is responsible to the FCC for the use of its radio license. So in a sense, the FCC is the watchdog, or at least the regulating body, for any content aired on a station. However, the FCC's standards don't deal much in accuracy or fairness; what keeps them busiest are managing frequency use, making sure stations are maintaining required logs, etc. The only areas related to content they are mandated to care about are equal time logs for political campaigning, and obscenity.
Many stations choose to become members of the content producers - NPR, PRI, etc That means that, as part of the NPR network [or whatever], they become an "affiliate" and access to choose from a list of programs NPR offers at lower rates than a non-member. But affiliation is not exclusive, so one station can be an affiliate (member) of several producing organizations.
So, if you're asking then who would be the watchdog over a content producer like, say, the PRI organization - I think it is very distributed. Each show has its own staff and organization, and has editors and producers. They have licensed the show to the content organization for distribution. So they are responsible, as a show, for breaches of communication law (like defamation), and the distributor might also have responsibility there, but I'm not sure about that. Most of the major producers do have an in-house ethics/ombudsman function - here is NPR's. here is PRI's, etc.
So, beyond the individual organizations responsible for creating, aggregating, and distributing the shows, you are in the same wild that the rest of the media are in. They are no different from TV news shows or print media in that way - there's no oversight body just for them. Mainstream watchdog organizations that oversee media generally, and include radio in their remit, include: Accuracy in Media and FAIR (as mentioned above), and commentary outlets like the Columbia Journalism Review and the previously mentioned On the Media. But watchdog groups are also totally independent, and there are biased ones, with both conservative and liberal slants on what they choose to track, so make sure you understand the watchdog organization when you look for information, too. Here's a list I Googled up from the Yale public library.
The keyword is independence. Most of the entities that make up public radio are independent, so they are treated like other independently managed media outlets. They're free to put content out there that is really politically skewed one way or the other, just like commercial radio, as long as they're not misusing their FCC licenses. News programs all have their own system of adhering to professional ethics, but entertainment programs have a lot of free rein to engage in parody, and there is space for opinion across the spectrum. Certainly, bias and mistakes are part of informational programming, but I think most major watchdog organizations do not discriminate based on the medium of transmission, so they cover TV, print, radio, in about the same way. I don't know of any such organization specific to radio transmission.
posted by Miko at 4:57 PM on February 19, 2016 [6 favorites]
Public radio is made up of different entities - it's not one source of content. There are independent public radio stations (such as some of the major university stations), community radio stations which can be started by community organizations that meet the criteria for a license, member-supported stations, etc. Most of these are public, noncommercial stations and the requirement for a license is that content be educational (not necessarily accurate, or news-oriented; just something with educational value to the community). They're all independent organizations, managed and funded separately.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a body created by legislation to support public radio in the United States. CPB channels what little funding is left from government sources to provide basic services to the sector (such as legal services and some licensing fees). But CPB does no programming. It does grant money to organizations that produce programming that may eventually air on a public station, but public stations are all considered independent, and the CPB doesn't dictate to anyone what they carry.
Public radio stations program for themselves. Those stations also pay the fees to carry programs produced by content-producing organizations. NPR is one such content producer. PRI is another, American Radio Exchange another, American Public Media, the BBC, the CBC, etc. These are all separate organizations that have no formal links with one another - but one local public radio organization may carry shows from all of them, plus their own originally produced content, or content pulled from smaller organizations or right off an exchange site like Transom or Public Radio Exchange. There is a decent analogy to a hometown newspaper, where some content will be generated as original reporting by the local staff, whereas other content might come from a wire service like the Associated Press or Reuters, and syndicated columns and comics from a syndicating company. Responsibility for programming rests with the local station. If the programming is local, presumably local audiences would be the ones in the position of policing the content and accuracy of the station's programming. The appropriate body to complain to about programming that originates locally is the station programming committee or program director. If the station belongs to a university or other organization, obviously the university and its board have some responsibility too, though press freedoms will apply.
At the next level, the local station is responsible to the FCC for the use of its radio license. So in a sense, the FCC is the watchdog, or at least the regulating body, for any content aired on a station. However, the FCC's standards don't deal much in accuracy or fairness; what keeps them busiest are managing frequency use, making sure stations are maintaining required logs, etc. The only areas related to content they are mandated to care about are equal time logs for political campaigning, and obscenity.
Many stations choose to become members of the content producers - NPR, PRI, etc That means that, as part of the NPR network [or whatever], they become an "affiliate" and access to choose from a list of programs NPR offers at lower rates than a non-member. But affiliation is not exclusive, so one station can be an affiliate (member) of several producing organizations.
So, if you're asking then who would be the watchdog over a content producer like, say, the PRI organization - I think it is very distributed. Each show has its own staff and organization, and has editors and producers. They have licensed the show to the content organization for distribution. So they are responsible, as a show, for breaches of communication law (like defamation), and the distributor might also have responsibility there, but I'm not sure about that. Most of the major producers do have an in-house ethics/ombudsman function - here is NPR's. here is PRI's, etc.
So, beyond the individual organizations responsible for creating, aggregating, and distributing the shows, you are in the same wild that the rest of the media are in. They are no different from TV news shows or print media in that way - there's no oversight body just for them. Mainstream watchdog organizations that oversee media generally, and include radio in their remit, include: Accuracy in Media and FAIR (as mentioned above), and commentary outlets like the Columbia Journalism Review and the previously mentioned On the Media. But watchdog groups are also totally independent, and there are biased ones, with both conservative and liberal slants on what they choose to track, so make sure you understand the watchdog organization when you look for information, too. Here's a list I Googled up from the Yale public library.
The keyword is independence. Most of the entities that make up public radio are independent, so they are treated like other independently managed media outlets. They're free to put content out there that is really politically skewed one way or the other, just like commercial radio, as long as they're not misusing their FCC licenses. News programs all have their own system of adhering to professional ethics, but entertainment programs have a lot of free rein to engage in parody, and there is space for opinion across the spectrum. Certainly, bias and mistakes are part of informational programming, but I think most major watchdog organizations do not discriminate based on the medium of transmission, so they cover TV, print, radio, in about the same way. I don't know of any such organization specific to radio transmission.
posted by Miko at 4:57 PM on February 19, 2016 [6 favorites]
My mistake, a station has to be a member to air NPR's programs, but I'm not sure same is true for other producers.
posted by Miko at 5:02 PM on February 19, 2016
posted by Miko at 5:02 PM on February 19, 2016
Response by poster: These are excellent. Thank you.
posted by CollectiveMind at 9:48 PM on February 20, 2016
posted by CollectiveMind at 9:48 PM on February 20, 2016
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posted by humboldt32 at 2:45 PM on February 19, 2016