Democracy depends on an informed citizenry and a free press. Our free press, now on life support, is in danger of being completely controlled by the corporations. Today, corporations act only in their best interest and will do what they can to prevent the flow of certain information to citizens. They are already making decisions about what they want citizens to know and what they want us not to know. Please take a few minutes to sign this petition.
Friends,
We believe that in a free society, our press and broadcasters should be strong and unafraid to challenge the powerful. But recently, public television pulled funding for “Citizen Koch,” a ground-breaking documentary by Academy Award-nominated filmmakers on the restricting and destructive role of money in politics.
Who could possibly be bankrolling such an outrageous compromise of the integrity of public broadcasting, you ask? None other than radical Tea Party billionaire David Koch, who serves as a trustee of and big time donor to PBS affiliates at New York’s WNET and Boston’s WGBH.1
Public television is meant to be a resource and discussion starter for all of us, but this incident shows that the Kochs’ influence is simply out of control. David Koch’s $23 million in donations to public television shouldn’t give him the power to suppress programming that serves the public good.2 We want to see PBS live up to its founding principles of serving the public interest — not the private interests of wealthy donors like the Kochs.
This is especially urgent because right now the Koch brothers are interested in taking over ten newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. If Koch dollars could influence PBS as much as they did, imagine how much damage they’ll do to our daily papers.
PBS went too far. Tell them to stop the self-censorship and air the documentary “Citizen Koch.”
In solidarity,
Alesa Mackool
SEIU.org
Sources:
1. David Koch’s chilling effect on public television, Bloomberg, 6/9/13
2. A word from our sponsor, The New Yorker, 5/27/13
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