Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

Complicated. A total of 354 member television stations share collective ownership. PBS receives government funds from Congress’ $445.5 million annual public broadcasting budget. Public broadcasting stations are funded by a combination of private donations from listeners and viewers, foundations and corporations, local and national underwriting, and federal funds, principally through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the non-profit corporation created to promote public broadcasting. CPB also oversees National Public Radio (NPR), some independent broadcasters and a few internet-based projects.

The private, nonprofit corporation was founded in 1969. Over the course of a year, 82 percent of all US television households ‒ and 198 million people ‒ watch PBS. It prides itself as being ‘America’s largest classroom’, based on its educational programming like ‘Sesame Street’; ‘America’s largest stage’ by ensuring the worlds of music, theater, dance and art remain available to all Americans; and ‘a trusted window to the world’ due to its exploration of science, history, culture, great literature and public affairs. A 2013 study showed that PBS KIDS resources can help close the math achievement gap for children from low-income families and better prepare them for kindergarten.

PBS’s director chairs the Ford Foundation’s investment committee and is CEO and president of The Rock Creek Group — a DC-based hedge fund.

Iranian-born and Oxford educated, she is a former treasurer at the World Bank. She’s married to historian Michael Beschloss, who is a regular pundit on PBS. The couple frequently attended White House dinners during the Clinton administration.

She gained chairmanship of the World Wide Web Foundation in November 2015.

Kerger joined PBS as its sixth president and chief executive in 2006. As such, she is "routinely considered one of TV’s most powerful women," and is regularly included in the Hollywood Reporter’s ‘Women in Entertainment Power 100’, an annual survey of the nation’s top women executives in media. She is responsible for bringing ‘Downton Abbey’ to American airwaves, and growing the network’s TV and online audiences. She worked at Educational Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) for more than a decade before her arrival at PBS. Kerger also serves as president of the PBS Foundation, an independent organization that raises private sector funding for PBS.

"Paula essentially runs a service organization," Geoffrey Sands, chairman of the PBS board and a director at global management consultancy McKinsey & Co., said in 2012. "It would be hard enough if she were CEO of an entity that she had full control over. PBS is nothing like that, so it becomes a very difficult position for anyone to succeed at."

Moyers served as White House Press Secretary for Lyndon Johnson in the 1960’s.

Later he moved into broadcasting, and the Texan’s 1980s shows enraged Republicans so much that they threatened to sever PBS’ funding. After a truce, Kenneth Tomlinson, an ally of President George W. Bush, targeted Moyers in 2003, complaining of a lack of balance in his programs. Moyers replied that he took "in stride attacks by the radical right wingers who have not given up demonizing me..."

He had also described his journalism as "the missing link in a nation wired for everything but the truth." Moyers is fiercely critical of the US media and has often blamed the rush to war in Iraq on their shortcomings.

During a 2012 presidential debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney told Jim Lehrer, the debate moderator and anchor of PBS show ‘NewsHour’, that he would cut federal funding to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting to trim the federal deficit. "I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS," Romney said. "I like PBS. I love [Sesame Street character] Big Bird. I actually like you, too." At the time, PBS and public radio received $445 million from the federal government, or less than $1.50 a person, while the federal deficit was $1.1 trillion (and it’s only gone up since then), making it 0.014 percent of the government budget.

The backlash on social media was immediate, with someone on Twitter creating a @FiredBigBird spoof account. The phrase ‘Big Bird’ generated about 17,000 tweets per minute and trended throughout that night.

Hollywood star Ben Affleck was featured on an episode of ‘Finding Your Roots’, a PBS show about ancestry, in October 2014. However, during production, the actor and director discovered that family members had owned slaves. He then requested the show omit the reference before airing, an appeal to which producers acquiesced.

"I didn’t want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves. I was embarrassed," Affleck said in a Facebook post made in April. "The very thought left a bad taste in my mouth."

As a result, PBS and WNET, an affiliate station in New York, decided to postpone new seasons of the series after they "determined that the series co-producers violated PBS standards by failing to shield the creative and editorial process from improper influence, and by failing to inform PBS or WNET of Mr. Affleck’s efforts to affect program content." After reforms that included hiring a new fact-checker and two new genealogists, PBS announced the newest season will return in January.

"It has become a more transparent process and a more rigorous process," Beth Hoppe, chief programming executive and general manager for general audience programming, said in October, "but essentially at its core these are personal stories about people who are finding out about their histories. That hasn’t changed."

The show, hosted by executive producer and Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and is underwritten by PBS, CPB, ancestry.com, Ford, Johnson & Johnson and Pom Wonderful.

PBS has also been charged with running infomercials that masquerade as documentaries, most notably for the US defense industry. A recent example was ‘Rise of the Drones’, a focus on unmanned aerial vehicles which was part-funded by Lockheed Martin — a military contractor.