Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "PBS NewsHour" in English language version.
TCI is the most ruthless of the cable monopolies. Now that its president, John Malone, has joined the ranks of the information elite, he is being hailed as a visionary by America's business pages. But John Malone who told McNeil-Lehrer viewers last week that TCI would not seek monopoly control of the information industries had different views not long ago: In 1984, Malone compared the cable industry to "a game of Monopoly" and said that TCI's primary goal was to leverage cash flow and assets to buy more property. He called TCI a "mammoth tax shelter" and said that earning money and paying taxes and dividends was "stupid."
New 'MacNeil/Lehrer' Owner: Liberty Media Corp., a subsidiary of cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc., has agreed to purchase a two-thirds interest in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. The company, which produces "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" for PBS, plans to develop programming for cable, the networks, and public television. The deal will not affect Robert MacNeil's plan to give up his co-anchor seat next October, but he will oversee all of the new non-"NewsHour" programming. Nor will the deal affect "NewsHour," which "is ours, and ours alone," PBS President Ervin Duggan said, "and it will continue to be so."
(For purposes of the summary below, "Old Liberty" refers to Liberty Media Corporation (including its predecessors) which changed its name to Liberty Interactive Corporation on September 22, 2011 and subsequently changed its name to Qurate Retail, Inc. on April 9, 2018. "New Liberty" refers to Liberty CapStarz, Inc. which changed its name to Liberty Media Corporation on September 22, 2011.)
Liberty Media today is a strange hybrid—part venture capital fund, part mutual fund, part asset shuffler extraordinaire, and part long-term operator of businesses. Its astonishing array of holdings (click here and download the PDF file to see the 9-page chart) includes bits and pieces of television channels like Game Show Network, Animal Planet, and significant pieces of massive publicly held companies like Interactive Corp. and Sprint. (He even owns two-thirds of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.)
Consistent with those commercials and despite its name, the news and commentary one finds on PBS are in rich tune with the narrow capitalist parameters of acceptable coverage and debate that typify the more fully and explicitly for-profit and commercialized corporate media. As progressive journalist David Sirota suggested two years ago, reflecting on recent investigations showing that super-moneyed, right-wing capitalists such as the Koch brothers and Texas billionaire John Arnold had (along with more liberal software mogul Bill Gates) influenced PBS content through multimillion-dollar donations, the "P" in PBS often seems to more properly stand for "Plutocratic," not "Public." None of this should be surprising to anyone familiar with the distinctively big-business-dominated history of U.S. broadcast media. Because the United States fails to provide anything like adequate funding for public broadcasting, both PBS and National Public Radio (a regular vehicle for neoliberal business ideology) depend upon foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals to pay for much of their programming. Beneath their standard claims to have no interest in shaping public media content, these private funders have bottom-line agendas, meaning that their contributions come with strings attached—strings that undermine the integrity of the "independent" journalism they bankroll. (For what it's worth, between 1994 and 2014, the "NewsHour" was primarily owned by the for-profit firm Liberty Media. Liberty Media was run by the conservative and politically active billionaire John Malone, who had a majority stake in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the show's producer.)
A few observers (Variety, 12/5/94) noted that "for Malone, M/L Prods. is a prestige buy that is likely to earn him some goodwill in Washington; TCI has been a frequent target of lawmakers." As Verne Gay (Newsday, 12/5/94) put it, "The new Republican-controlled Congress may be less willing to bash Malone, even less so now that he owns NewsHour. Washington types, you see, adore NewsHour."
TCI is the most ruthless of the cable monopolies. Now that its president, John Malone, has joined the ranks of the information elite, he is being hailed as a visionary by America's business pages. But John Malone who told McNeil-Lehrer viewers last week that TCI would not seek monopoly control of the information industries had different views not long ago: In 1984, Malone compared the cable industry to "a game of Monopoly" and said that TCI's primary goal was to leverage cash flow and assets to buy more property. He called TCI a "mammoth tax shelter" and said that earning money and paying taxes and dividends was "stupid."
New 'MacNeil/Lehrer' Owner: Liberty Media Corp., a subsidiary of cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc., has agreed to purchase a two-thirds interest in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. The company, which produces "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" for PBS, plans to develop programming for cable, the networks, and public television. The deal will not affect Robert MacNeil's plan to give up his co-anchor seat next October, but he will oversee all of the new non-"NewsHour" programming. Nor will the deal affect "NewsHour," which "is ours, and ours alone," PBS President Ervin Duggan said, "and it will continue to be so."
(For purposes of the summary below, "Old Liberty" refers to Liberty Media Corporation (including its predecessors) which changed its name to Liberty Interactive Corporation on September 22, 2011 and subsequently changed its name to Qurate Retail, Inc. on April 9, 2018. "New Liberty" refers to Liberty CapStarz, Inc. which changed its name to Liberty Media Corporation on September 22, 2011.)
Liberty Media today is a strange hybrid—part venture capital fund, part mutual fund, part asset shuffler extraordinaire, and part long-term operator of businesses. Its astonishing array of holdings (click here and download the PDF file to see the 9-page chart) includes bits and pieces of television channels like Game Show Network, Animal Planet, and significant pieces of massive publicly held companies like Interactive Corp. and Sprint. (He even owns two-thirds of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.)
Consistent with those commercials and despite its name, the news and commentary one finds on PBS are in rich tune with the narrow capitalist parameters of acceptable coverage and debate that typify the more fully and explicitly for-profit and commercialized corporate media. As progressive journalist David Sirota suggested two years ago, reflecting on recent investigations showing that super-moneyed, right-wing capitalists such as the Koch brothers and Texas billionaire John Arnold had (along with more liberal software mogul Bill Gates) influenced PBS content through multimillion-dollar donations, the "P" in PBS often seems to more properly stand for "Plutocratic," not "Public." None of this should be surprising to anyone familiar with the distinctively big-business-dominated history of U.S. broadcast media. Because the United States fails to provide anything like adequate funding for public broadcasting, both PBS and National Public Radio (a regular vehicle for neoliberal business ideology) depend upon foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals to pay for much of their programming. Beneath their standard claims to have no interest in shaping public media content, these private funders have bottom-line agendas, meaning that their contributions come with strings attached—strings that undermine the integrity of the "independent" journalism they bankroll. (For what it's worth, between 1994 and 2014, the "NewsHour" was primarily owned by the for-profit firm Liberty Media. Liberty Media was run by the conservative and politically active billionaire John Malone, who had a majority stake in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the show's producer.)
A few observers (Variety, 12/5/94) noted that "for Malone, M/L Prods. is a prestige buy that is likely to earn him some goodwill in Washington; TCI has been a frequent target of lawmakers." As Verne Gay (Newsday, 12/5/94) put it, "The new Republican-controlled Congress may be less willing to bash Malone, even less so now that he owns NewsHour. Washington types, you see, adore NewsHour."
MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, producer of the venerable "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," is trying again to launch a late-night newscast on Public Broadcasting Service stations nationwide, this time in conjunction with the New York Times...MacNeil/Lehrer first tried to launch a late-night newscast, dubbed "The National News," in 1995. Plans for the program, which was to be produced with Dow Jones & Co.'s Wall Street Journal Television unit, were eventually dropped.
Peter Barton has always belonged to what he calls the "squadron of the second bananas." Few outside the cable industry know who he is -- and those inside it know him best as the right-hand man to his mentor, John C. Malone, the most powerful figure in the business.
MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the production company owned by the former "NewsHour" anchors, Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, and Liberty Media, announced in October that it wanted to donate the program to WETA if a deal could be reached. The company is also giving WETA its archives and some smaller production projects. Its employees will become employees of NewsHour Productions LLC, a nonprofit WETA subsidiary set up to operate the program. No money will change hands
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, public television's nightly newscast, got two important boosts in the last week: Jim Lehrer, the Washington anchor, returned to the program Monday night after a three- month absence for heart surgery, and 102 public television stations voted to help underwrite the program for the 1984-85 season. The two developments were especially welcome, public-television officials say, because, seven months after its transformation from a half-hour to an hour, the newscast is still struggling to gain acceptance in its expanded form. Contrary to expectations, the nationwide audience of four million viewers has not grown this year. And a number of station officials contend that the program would be stronger if it returned to a half-hour.
However, since 1994, the NewsHour has been produced and primarily owned by the for-profit colossus, Liberty Media. Liberty, which is run by conservative billionaire John Malone, owns the majority stake in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions - the entity that produces the journalistic content of the show. While other standalone public television projects are often produced by small independent production companies, the NewsHour stands out for being owned by a major for-profit media conglomerate headed by a politically active billionaire.
People often ask me if there are guidelines in our practice of what I like to call MacNeil/Lehrer journalism. Well, yes, there are. And here they are. Do nothing I cannot defend. Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me. Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story. Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am. Assume the same about all people on whom I report. Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise. Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything. Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously. And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.
TCI is the most ruthless of the cable monopolies. Now that its president, John Malone, has joined the ranks of the information elite, he is being hailed as a visionary by America's business pages. But John Malone who told McNeil-Lehrer viewers last week that TCI would not seek monopoly control of the information industries had different views not long ago: In 1984, Malone compared the cable industry to "a game of Monopoly" and said that TCI's primary goal was to leverage cash flow and assets to buy more property. He called TCI a "mammoth tax shelter" and said that earning money and paying taxes and dividends was "stupid."
New 'MacNeil/Lehrer' Owner: Liberty Media Corp., a subsidiary of cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc., has agreed to purchase a two-thirds interest in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. The company, which produces "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" for PBS, plans to develop programming for cable, the networks, and public television. The deal will not affect Robert MacNeil's plan to give up his co-anchor seat next October, but he will oversee all of the new non-"NewsHour" programming. Nor will the deal affect "NewsHour," which "is ours, and ours alone," PBS President Ervin Duggan said, "and it will continue to be so."
(For purposes of the summary below, "Old Liberty" refers to Liberty Media Corporation (including its predecessors) which changed its name to Liberty Interactive Corporation on September 22, 2011 and subsequently changed its name to Qurate Retail, Inc. on April 9, 2018. "New Liberty" refers to Liberty CapStarz, Inc. which changed its name to Liberty Media Corporation on September 22, 2011.)
Liberty Media today is a strange hybrid—part venture capital fund, part mutual fund, part asset shuffler extraordinaire, and part long-term operator of businesses. Its astonishing array of holdings (click here and download the PDF file to see the 9-page chart) includes bits and pieces of television channels like Game Show Network, Animal Planet, and significant pieces of massive publicly held companies like Interactive Corp. and Sprint. (He even owns two-thirds of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.)
Consistent with those commercials and despite its name, the news and commentary one finds on PBS are in rich tune with the narrow capitalist parameters of acceptable coverage and debate that typify the more fully and explicitly for-profit and commercialized corporate media. As progressive journalist David Sirota suggested two years ago, reflecting on recent investigations showing that super-moneyed, right-wing capitalists such as the Koch brothers and Texas billionaire John Arnold had (along with more liberal software mogul Bill Gates) influenced PBS content through multimillion-dollar donations, the "P" in PBS often seems to more properly stand for "Plutocratic," not "Public." None of this should be surprising to anyone familiar with the distinctively big-business-dominated history of U.S. broadcast media. Because the United States fails to provide anything like adequate funding for public broadcasting, both PBS and National Public Radio (a regular vehicle for neoliberal business ideology) depend upon foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals to pay for much of their programming. Beneath their standard claims to have no interest in shaping public media content, these private funders have bottom-line agendas, meaning that their contributions come with strings attached—strings that undermine the integrity of the "independent" journalism they bankroll. (For what it's worth, between 1994 and 2014, the "NewsHour" was primarily owned by the for-profit firm Liberty Media. Liberty Media was run by the conservative and politically active billionaire John Malone, who had a majority stake in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the show's producer.)
A few observers (Variety, 12/5/94) noted that "for Malone, M/L Prods. is a prestige buy that is likely to earn him some goodwill in Washington; TCI has been a frequent target of lawmakers." As Verne Gay (Newsday, 12/5/94) put it, "The new Republican-controlled Congress may be less willing to bash Malone, even less so now that he owns NewsHour. Washington types, you see, adore NewsHour."
TCI is the most ruthless of the cable monopolies. Now that its president, John Malone, has joined the ranks of the information elite, he is being hailed as a visionary by America's business pages. But John Malone who told McNeil-Lehrer viewers last week that TCI would not seek monopoly control of the information industries had different views not long ago: In 1984, Malone compared the cable industry to "a game of Monopoly" and said that TCI's primary goal was to leverage cash flow and assets to buy more property. He called TCI a "mammoth tax shelter" and said that earning money and paying taxes and dividends was "stupid."
New 'MacNeil/Lehrer' Owner: Liberty Media Corp., a subsidiary of cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc., has agreed to purchase a two-thirds interest in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. The company, which produces "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" for PBS, plans to develop programming for cable, the networks, and public television. The deal will not affect Robert MacNeil's plan to give up his co-anchor seat next October, but he will oversee all of the new non-"NewsHour" programming. Nor will the deal affect "NewsHour," which "is ours, and ours alone," PBS President Ervin Duggan said, "and it will continue to be so."
(For purposes of the summary below, "Old Liberty" refers to Liberty Media Corporation (including its predecessors) which changed its name to Liberty Interactive Corporation on September 22, 2011 and subsequently changed its name to Qurate Retail, Inc. on April 9, 2018. "New Liberty" refers to Liberty CapStarz, Inc. which changed its name to Liberty Media Corporation on September 22, 2011.)
Liberty Media today is a strange hybrid—part venture capital fund, part mutual fund, part asset shuffler extraordinaire, and part long-term operator of businesses. Its astonishing array of holdings (click here and download the PDF file to see the 9-page chart) includes bits and pieces of television channels like Game Show Network, Animal Planet, and significant pieces of massive publicly held companies like Interactive Corp. and Sprint. (He even owns two-thirds of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.)
Consistent with those commercials and despite its name, the news and commentary one finds on PBS are in rich tune with the narrow capitalist parameters of acceptable coverage and debate that typify the more fully and explicitly for-profit and commercialized corporate media. As progressive journalist David Sirota suggested two years ago, reflecting on recent investigations showing that super-moneyed, right-wing capitalists such as the Koch brothers and Texas billionaire John Arnold had (along with more liberal software mogul Bill Gates) influenced PBS content through multimillion-dollar donations, the "P" in PBS often seems to more properly stand for "Plutocratic," not "Public." None of this should be surprising to anyone familiar with the distinctively big-business-dominated history of U.S. broadcast media. Because the United States fails to provide anything like adequate funding for public broadcasting, both PBS and National Public Radio (a regular vehicle for neoliberal business ideology) depend upon foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals to pay for much of their programming. Beneath their standard claims to have no interest in shaping public media content, these private funders have bottom-line agendas, meaning that their contributions come with strings attached—strings that undermine the integrity of the "independent" journalism they bankroll. (For what it's worth, between 1994 and 2014, the "NewsHour" was primarily owned by the for-profit firm Liberty Media. Liberty Media was run by the conservative and politically active billionaire John Malone, who had a majority stake in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the show's producer.)
A few observers (Variety, 12/5/94) noted that "for Malone, M/L Prods. is a prestige buy that is likely to earn him some goodwill in Washington; TCI has been a frequent target of lawmakers." As Verne Gay (Newsday, 12/5/94) put it, "The new Republican-controlled Congress may be less willing to bash Malone, even less so now that he owns NewsHour. Washington types, you see, adore NewsHour."
TCI is the most ruthless of the cable monopolies. Now that its president, John Malone, has joined the ranks of the information elite, he is being hailed as a visionary by America's business pages. But John Malone who told McNeil-Lehrer viewers last week that TCI would not seek monopoly control of the information industries had different views not long ago: In 1984, Malone compared the cable industry to "a game of Monopoly" and said that TCI's primary goal was to leverage cash flow and assets to buy more property. He called TCI a "mammoth tax shelter" and said that earning money and paying taxes and dividends was "stupid."
New 'MacNeil/Lehrer' Owner: Liberty Media Corp., a subsidiary of cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc., has agreed to purchase a two-thirds interest in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. The company, which produces "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" for PBS, plans to develop programming for cable, the networks, and public television. The deal will not affect Robert MacNeil's plan to give up his co-anchor seat next October, but he will oversee all of the new non-"NewsHour" programming. Nor will the deal affect "NewsHour," which "is ours, and ours alone," PBS President Ervin Duggan said, "and it will continue to be so."
(For purposes of the summary below, "Old Liberty" refers to Liberty Media Corporation (including its predecessors) which changed its name to Liberty Interactive Corporation on September 22, 2011 and subsequently changed its name to Qurate Retail, Inc. on April 9, 2018. "New Liberty" refers to Liberty CapStarz, Inc. which changed its name to Liberty Media Corporation on September 22, 2011.)
Liberty Media today is a strange hybrid—part venture capital fund, part mutual fund, part asset shuffler extraordinaire, and part long-term operator of businesses. Its astonishing array of holdings (click here and download the PDF file to see the 9-page chart) includes bits and pieces of television channels like Game Show Network, Animal Planet, and significant pieces of massive publicly held companies like Interactive Corp. and Sprint. (He even owns two-thirds of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.)
Consistent with those commercials and despite its name, the news and commentary one finds on PBS are in rich tune with the narrow capitalist parameters of acceptable coverage and debate that typify the more fully and explicitly for-profit and commercialized corporate media. As progressive journalist David Sirota suggested two years ago, reflecting on recent investigations showing that super-moneyed, right-wing capitalists such as the Koch brothers and Texas billionaire John Arnold had (along with more liberal software mogul Bill Gates) influenced PBS content through multimillion-dollar donations, the "P" in PBS often seems to more properly stand for "Plutocratic," not "Public." None of this should be surprising to anyone familiar with the distinctively big-business-dominated history of U.S. broadcast media. Because the United States fails to provide anything like adequate funding for public broadcasting, both PBS and National Public Radio (a regular vehicle for neoliberal business ideology) depend upon foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals to pay for much of their programming. Beneath their standard claims to have no interest in shaping public media content, these private funders have bottom-line agendas, meaning that their contributions come with strings attached—strings that undermine the integrity of the "independent" journalism they bankroll. (For what it's worth, between 1994 and 2014, the "NewsHour" was primarily owned by the for-profit firm Liberty Media. Liberty Media was run by the conservative and politically active billionaire John Malone, who had a majority stake in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the show's producer.)
A few observers (Variety, 12/5/94) noted that "for Malone, M/L Prods. is a prestige buy that is likely to earn him some goodwill in Washington; TCI has been a frequent target of lawmakers." As Verne Gay (Newsday, 12/5/94) put it, "The new Republican-controlled Congress may be less willing to bash Malone, even less so now that he owns NewsHour. Washington types, you see, adore NewsHour."
People often ask me if there are guidelines in our practice of what I like to call MacNeil/Lehrer journalism. Well, yes, there are. And here they are. Do nothing I cannot defend. Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me. Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story. Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am. Assume the same about all people on whom I report. Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise. Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything. Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously. And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.
