14. United States: Continued Weak Funding for Public Service Media

Compared to many of their Western European counterparts, public service media play a small role in the commercially driven American media system. This derives in large part from weak funding commitments. In the United States the main issues for public service media are about funding and independence, rather than transparency. For this reason, the chapter describes the funding process for domestic public service media. Subsequently, the independence of public media providers is discussed. It is argued that the major threats to public media stem not from government funding (as critics often suggest) but, rather, the specific ways in which these media are exposed to potentially corrupting influences from government officials, programme sponsors, and culturally elite audiences. Together, these different constituencies make American public service media less genuinely ‘public’ than they might otherwise be. The chapter concludes by discussing future directions for public service media in the United States.