B. J. Bullert,
Public Television: Politics and the Battle over Documentary Film,
New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
ISBN 0-8135-2470-9
Review copy supplied by the publisher.
Uploaded 20 September 2002
The steady flow of radical and often ground breaking political documentaries emerging from America’s independent sector has been one of the great ironies of that country’s overwhelmingly commercial media. Funding their work in piecemeal fashion from numerous philanthropic trusts, independent documentarists generally aspire to reach an audience and recoup some costs through Public Television. In this account of the fate of political documentary in America from 1985 &endash; 1993, Bullert exposes the fragility of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) by exploring the impact of five controversial, independently produced documentaries that played its two long running documentary strands, Frontline and P.OV. PBS is a membership organization representing Public Television’s 346 member affiliate stations. PBS is the program commissioning arm of Public Television and schedules the National Programming Service, which was available to all stations but from which they may take what they wish according to community interests. PBS was originally directed to serve multiple goals, some of which were ambiguous and conflicting. The “predicament of public television” according to one PBS executive is the requirement to be both “a paragon of traditional journalistic integrity and a playground of free expression”(Bullert,1997:19) However, by the late eighties pressures to silence dissenting voices at PBS reflected the repressive conservative values of the Reagan era. In 1981, calls for the total defunding of public television sparked sustained funding cuts, driving programming to safer middle ground in an attempt to win middle class viewers, donations and subscribers, and thereby marking a further shift away from the idea of an open society where tolerance is valued.
Independent producers fought back and won, their victory leading to the establishment of the Independent Television Service (ITVS), a funding outlet for independently produced programs. However, it is ultimately broadcasters who hold the controlling voice. Bullert points to the scenario where “only the most tenacious, fashionable and funded survive”, noting this will not necessarily correlate with “the most original, talented or innovative” (1997:xvi).
Public television: politics and the battle over documentary film follows a simple logical structure, the first three chapters detailing the PBS funding and selection system, the respective milieux of independent producers and Public Television programmers, and a chapter outlining the two documentary strands, Frontline and P.O.V. The discussion of the two documentary strands underlines one of the central issues for public television. Frontline, the largely in-house investigative strand is a flagship program for PBS and adheres to a conventional, authoritative presentation style that has become the house style for public affairs documentary. P.O.V. in contrast was established to provide a window for independent producers and in theory sets no boundaries on style, inviting innovation. The remaining five chapters of the book are devoted to the five documentary case studies, followed by the author’s conclusions.
Discussion of five independent documentaries which “acquired the controversial label” when scheduled on PBS, reveals the role the media played in framing how documentaries were viewed. The case studies also reflect the idiosynchracies and contradictions inherent in PBS’s selection and editorial processes, and its diverse station affiliates. The documentaries chosen are Dark circle (1985), an exploration of the nuclear weapons industry, Days of rage: the young Palestinians (1989) which dealt with the Intifada and the new attitudes of Palestinian youth; Tongues untied (1989), Marlon Riggs’ critically acclaimed performative documentary about being gay and black in urban America; Robert Hilferty’s Stop the church (1989) which documented AIDS activists protesting anti gay attitudes in the Catholic Church; and lastly the 1989 box office hit, Roger and me, Michael Moore’s searing, comedic critique of General Motors and the American dream. As an adjunct to the last, an additional discussion of a Frontline, in-house documentary on General Motors, The heartbeat of America, which also sparked considerable controversy, helps to elucidate power play by General Motors. The latter has been, coincidentally, a major sponsor of PBS’s most prominent documentarist, Ken Burns of The civil war series fame. The controversy surrounding each documentary is approached from several perspectives; that of the filmmakers, the executive producer, station managers and the media. Each case studies reports the background and development of the documentary, includes a detailed program description, and relates how the controversy arose.
Exploring the dilemma inherent in endeavouring to serve marginalised interests while becoming increasingly dependent on corporate funding, this book offers fascinating insights into PBS’s consultative processes. Delivering a national mission within a decentralised system of 346 diverse, affiliate stations, all committed to serving their local community interests, and to retaining audience and corporate sponsors, entails some artful compromise. Examples of the latter include the moving of the P.O.V. strand to a very late night timeslot; packaging controversial documentaries as “specials” topped with “explanatory introductions and tailed with panel discussions offering right of reply to opposition voices, and lastly, finding and publicising alternative viewing venues for the documentary as an alternative to broadcast, so that those who want to see it can.
The book originated from Bullert’s doctoral thesis, which is apparent in the very thorough research and attention to methodology. But, this is also very much an insider’s viewpoint. During the writing of the book Bullert was herself completing a political documentary about the composer of the “labor anthem “Joe Hill”‘ titled Earl Robinson: ballad of an American. While her insider knowledge provides special insights into the filmmaker’s perspective she is careful to establish an analytic schema in which all viewpoints are covered.
The introductory chapter, “The anatomy of controversy”, discusses the Public television mandate and six concepts applied throughout the case studies. The first of these is “gatekeeping”, whereby editors, programmers and executive producers include or exclude programs according to set criteria. The second concept, “framing and reframing”, notes the naturalising of particular ways of seeing, applied by filmmakers and often reapplied by media. Discussing “television as a social unifier” Bullert observes how familiar conventions and shared common experience enable television to construct a sense of community and suggests that radical documentarists push the boundaries of this “comfort zone” challenging viewers’ preconceptions. However, such filmmakers, the writer asserts, tend “to stand out like wayward children in the Public Television family”(6). The term, “cultural authorities” is applied to those who determine the content of television, with independent documentarists cast as bringing in voices from beyond the mainstream. On the subject of the public sphere Bullert reveals the “underlying premise of this work is that democracy requires a media system that allows for the relatively free expression of people’s views &endash; venues where everyone’s authentic perspective can have a place in the public dialogue.” It’s a fine and noble ideal but one fraught with many imponderables. Habermas gets only passing reference here, which seems a little remiss given the extensive scholarship his writing has evoked on the subject, exposing the many limitations implicit in the ideal of the media as an open public forum and aid to the formulation of an informed public opinion.
Having interviewed many of PBS decision makers as well as the filmmakers, Bullert is sensitive to the tensions at play here, but having experienced the system first hand, is acutely aware of the sense of system failure and the lost opportunity that PBS has come to represent as she observes here:
Censorship is perhaps too strong a word to describe the complex, collective communications process that has kept provocative works by non-elite cultural authorities marginalised or off the public television airwaves. While all the documentaries presented here eventually aired, some were trapped with lengthy supplemental discussions or ghettoised in the only series outlet for their innovative work, P.O.V., and all were framed in the media coverage in terms of the controversy around them.(Bullert,1997:190)
It is perhaps inevitable that a work that sets out to elucidate bureaucratic process will suffer a glut of factual reportage of who said what, and detail here tends, at times, to obfuscate rather than clarify the subject under scrutiny. But Bullert’s exploration of how controversies developed, through extensive industry interviews, undoubtedly elucidates how public interpretation of these documentaries was frequently hijacked away from the filmmakers’ intentions. It is the bigger picture, of how the decentralised PBS structure undermines the very idea behind the National Programming Service that tends to be neglected here, for although implicit, it is not really developed. Public television’s dilemma is not just about a funding shortfall and the self censorship this indirectly initiates. The philosophical foundations of federalism and individualism on which public television is based assures a democratic system, but undermines the coherence integral to a nation wide mission.
Public broadcasters everywhere juggle multiple goals in ways that are quite foreign to profit driven commercial broadcasters. But such juggling is generally made easier in the centralised structures of public service broadcasters where a single management team is in charge of keeping “all the balls in the air”. The failure to explore the inadequacies of structure leaves many of the questions raised here unresolved. Bullert’s focus is on documentaries, and the changing critieria for arts funding and what Public television does do very well, is detail the process whereby documentary filmmakers’ efforts to challenge the audience with marginalised social and political perspectives are frequently hijacked and misrepresented by both broadcaster and media.
Mary De Brett