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Let's Have Separation of Press and State Pat BooneBecause our "natural order" is so blessed, it's only obvious to most Americans that government doesn't do news delivery. It does law enforcement, it does law making, it does policy, it even does debate and – under our Constitution – mail delivery. But Uncle Sam is not our paperboy. Government doesn't do news delivery. In the marketplace of ideas, we can all pretty much agree that the government should not maintain any sales stall of its own. This will be more obvious to Americans than it is to many others in the global community, but it will be the most obvious to those – say, emigres from the old USSR – whose experience with governments elsewhere was tougher to endure. A monopolistic state news agency is one of the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime, and any "official" state news agency has Rodney Dangerfield's problem with respect. Story Continues Below Our nation's founding fathers, less nervous about what powers government should have than they were about what powers it should not have, enumerated no news delivery powers to the government except for census taking. We have remained a nation of politically free and boisterous citizens by way of privately published and broadcast accounts of the affairs of the day. We have never depended on any regular government news service, and if one were ever needed, we would hardly be citizens worthy of further democracy. For any body politic the impulse to individual free speech is simply a vital sign. But speech is supposed to be free – not tax supported! Appropriately, then, it's the role of government to protect political speech, but it's ridiculous to think the government has a role to provide it. In the marketplace of ideas, groups and individuals competing for influence in government may have an abundance of sales programs, but the government itself ought to have none. The same sentence in the First Amendment that prohibits government from "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" also prohibits government from "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." We often get reminded these days that "separation of church and state" is not in the text of the Constitution. But we've taken to widespread agonizing over it. The time has come for doing likewise over separation of press and state. If permitting the Ten Commandments to be displayed on public property is an example of government respecting an establishment of religion, isn't government abridging the freedom of the press when subsidizing the advocacy of a controversial proposition – as often happens on a PBS broadcast? There is only finite broadcast time available on PBS, so if certain polemicists use it up, they have gained advantage over their opponents. A logic no more strained than that of many judicial rulings could say that their opponents have had their freedom of the press abridged. Ah, come on, now! The Corporation for Public Broadcasting operates under a statutory mandate for "balance and objectivity," don't you know? The temporarily disadvantaged opponents will get their fair hearing during subsequent broadcast time! Oh – and when will that happen uniformly and exactly? When it sleets in Hades? Measuring up to their "balance and objectivity" mandate will continue to frustrate PBS chieftains, just as the new chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, is discovering in things like the fuss over Bill Moyers' recurring public TV flourishes. (My friend Bill is a "soul brother" to Al Franken, but not as funny.) Balance and objectivity will always be in the eye of the beholder, anyway, even if deliberated continually by solemn panels of idealists. Why don't we just acknowledge that the Information Age has changed everything – and let artists and media folks find their own likeminded supporters? Why is taxpayer-funded "public broadcasting" still deemed necessary, or even constitutionally appropriate, for that matter? What's been said before deserves merciless repetition here: Once any government program is in place, it never gets dismantled! For me, this taxpayer-funded broadcasting (admirable as much of it is) is much like the hotly debated government support of painters, sculptors and other artists (admirable as some of their works are). For centuries, talented composers and artists found patrons who commissioned and supported them. Even now, huge companies pay staggering sums to sculptors who stack giant scraps of metal together and display them in lobbies and atria. Fair enough; stockholders pay for that, not bewildered taxpayers. Let the likes of Bill Moyers and the Cookie Monster and (already happened) Louis Rukeyser shout from any of the burgeoning numbers of electronic rooftops that will accommodate them, but let's drop having the government provide for them. A "wall of separation between church and state" isn't in the Constitution, but it's generally understood that one exists. We really could use such reverence for a wall of separation between press and state.
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