By Samantha Davidson Green, JAM Executive Director

It was the winter of our DOGE discontent, followed by the summer of slashing, which included the death blow to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I am often asked, “With all the cuts to public media and nonprofits, are you guys OK at JAM?”

The short answer is: Yes, we are OK, for now. But I want to talk about “public media” – what it means to me, why I care so much about it, and why I hope you do (or will) too. I want to hear your thoughts on the subject. I’d like to position JAM in the unfolding story of public media, and I hope this conversation will lead us to envision a new American public media “commons.” Here we go.

A brief biography of public media and me: PBS and I were born in the same year (1969). Sesame Street and I are virtually twins (I’m three weeks older). Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, Oscar and Maria taught me my letters and numbers, how to overcome fears, how things work, and how to be a good friend. Public television and I grew up together – next came Electric Company, then 3-2-1 Contact. Public media showed me how grown-ups should behave – with kindness, reason, curiosity, and a spirit of compromise. As my peers and I became teenagers, however, MTV lured us to cable where the three channels of our childhoods exploded to hundreds. Commercial versions of history and science and kids’ “educational” shows sprang up, with a difference… Yet public media endured, a trusted home to go back to as we got older and hungered for thoughtful analysis on PBS’s The News Hour or NPR’s All Things Considered.

In 1995 I went to work for public television at KQED TV9 in San Francisco where this breathless fan girl got to meet Jim Lehrer, Bill Moyers, Terry Gross, Juan Suarez, and (wait for it)… Bill Nye the Science Guy! My first job was educational outreach, then creative services and new program development. It was there I first encountered the field of “media literacy” (and believed we could teach critical thinking fast enough to keep up with this new thing called the Internet).
From the inside, I saw the stitching of this patchwork system that miraculously produced the quality shows I grew up with – an organism as idiosyncratic, decentralized, and contradictory as our country itself. I also saw the tireless struggle to fund and keep public broadcasting on-air. I learned how in 1967 President Lyndon Johnson was presented two bills: one to create the public broadcasting system, the other to fund it. He signed the first, but not the second (to the chagrin of audiences who suffer through membership drives). The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was created as a part-way measure, typically funding 10-20% of PBS and stations’ budgets. But members of the public have always voluntarily funded the majority of public media budgets. It was a bureaucratic but deeply well-intentioned place.

Today’s culture wars that led to CPB’s defunding – for the first time in my life – are not a new battlefield for public broadcasting. At KQED in the ‘90s, we got calls from angry progressives on the one hand, and hate calls from conservatives on the other, such as when Ellen Degeneres, who had come out as gay, hosted Sesame Street. Conservatives in Congress threatened to defund CPB then too, but common sense and moderation prevailed.

No longer. The Trump administration’s accusation that public broadcasting is guilty of liberal bias, used to justify the funding cut, is consistent with their hostility against the free press generally – both private and public. If this were a rational debate, I would point out to the administration that their rationale works against their purpose: In my observation, the tether of congressional funding has exerted a moderating influence, pulling public broadcasting to the center. On the inside, I experienced stringent measures in place to enforce firewalls between content and funders. My NPR radio reporter friends (and softball teammates) held themselves and each other to the highest journalistic standards for verifying sources and engaging contrasting voices on current issues. A culture of checks and balances followed our multiple accountabilities – to our members, sponsors, foundations, and the United States Congress. But this debate is not rational.

The real argument, in my view, is not “left” vs. “right” bias, but rather the public good vs. private profit. The categories sometimes track, but they’re different in important ways. Public media is losing this fight. What are we losing? Like species diversity and democracy itself, will we awaken to its value only after it’s irretrievably gone?

Today I lead JAM, a community access media organization (AMO), or as some call it, a “public access” television. We occupy a different tier of public media from public broadcasting, but we share the common denominator of serving the public good over commercial media’s profit motive. This year has put the importance of our work in stark relief.

What’s the difference between public television and public access television? If you’re confused, you’re not alone – it’s worth a minute to lay it out: Like public broadcasting, community (or public) access television was created by an act of Congress, the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 (the year I graduated college). Elected leaders at the time recognized the risk to democracy of information migrating from the air (a public resource) via broadcast transmission to cable (a privately-owned, for-profit, and content-controlled space, not beholden to the same First Amendment protections as public spaces). As cable companies rolled out cable on public lands and poles, the legislation mandated that they designate channels for local, public control to serve public, education, and government (PEG) purposes. States have latitude in how to administer the cable franchising authority; typically either a local municipality or a board-governed nonprofit 501(c)3 operates community access stations. Founded in 1993 as “Dresden TV” in the basement of Hanover High School on the NH side, our organization grew to serve the Upper Valley in both NH and VT as “Community Access Television” (CATV) before rebranding in 2022 as JAM. We are hyper-local, so although we participate in statewide networks to share content and best practices, our accountability is entirely to our local community.

The public broadcasting system born amidst the social upheaval of the ‘60s offered an aspirational vision of a public media space where ideas could be exchanged, empathy could grow, and our “single garment of destiny” could be woven together as citizens of the same democratic nation. By 1992, our aspirations were less lofty and more prophylactic, aiming to protect consumers (a telling choice of words… I prefer the term “citizens”) from the ill effects of commercial media companies’ control over information, but an exercise of elected government to stand up for the public interest nonetheless.

Now here we are. Amidst the unimaginable changes to our media spaces wrought by the Internet, social media, and artificial intelligence, our government is in full retreat from representing the public good – or even asking what that might be in this brave new world. So it’s up to us – the people – to ask the big questions and roll up our sleeves: What do we want public media to mean in the world we now inhabit? Where will we create trusted, respectful spaces where media bring us together for kind, reasonable, curious conversations that are respectful of differences and committed to solving actual problems? Where can our children learn how adults should behave in a civilized democracy? How can we use now ubiquitous media tools to tell stories that aim to uplift – rather than profit off of – our fellow human beings? What are your questions, concerns, and ideas for the future of public media? And how does JAM fit into your vision?

Please email me at samantha@uvjam.org. I look forward to hearing from you.