Prof. Walsh: Eliminating Public Funds for PBS Will Create New Divisions in Society
March 24, 2017
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Greg Walsh, assistant professor in the University of Baltimore's Division of Science, Information Arts and Technologies and director of the M.S. in Interaction Design and Information Architecture program, writes in The Baltimore Sun that proposals to flatten the budgets of public media such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will lead to new divisions across society, and do enormous harm to families and children.
Prof. Walsh says the cuts will cause a "tidal wave of unintended consequences," and lead to a spiraling down of the availabiliy of quality television programming for children.
"The economic abundance that once allowed for much of what we came to know as 'the electronic town square'—including the highly valued teaching of our children—is being sliced up," Prof. Walsh writes. "And what slice your kid gets depends on your class and what technology you can buy. Call it what you will, but all of our kids are being shortchanged."
Prof. Walsh points to a 2016 decision by PBS to move first-run episodes of Sesame Street over to HBO, where paying customers help to underwrite production costs. This new reality, he notes, is an indicator that the once-egalitarian program "has already philosophically left its roots."
While the business of television has changed since Sesame Street's early days in the 1970s, Prof. Walsh writes, the core values of commercial-free educational TV remain worthy of public support.
"There is no price tag for these qualities," he says.
Read the op-ed in The Baltimore Sun.
Learn more about Prof. Greg Walsh.