PBS falls short

Public broadcasters have blown it on the hearings

Amid the tawdriness and the partisanship, the impugning of motives, and the hypocrisy over sex and privacy, it is sometimes easy to forget that impeachment is serious business. But it is, and the repugnant behavior of both the president and his congressional pursuers does not diminish the importance of what's unfolding in Washington.

In a time of such historical significance, there is nothing more important than keeping citizens informed -- in as direct, unfiltered, and comprehensive a way as possible, regardless of how few people in this strangely apathetic era may actually pay attention.

Thus it is disturbing that public television -- the one electronic medium available to virtually every American -- has chosen to cherry-pick the process, broadcasting events that promised to have some sex appeal while skipping the more tedious tasks of democracy.

Yes, the Public Broadcasting System carried the entire floor debate last Friday and Saturday, including the vote to impeach Clinton.

But it skipped many of the House Judiciary Committee proceedings that led up to Saturday's vote. It skipped the statements and votes of committee members on December 10 and 11. It even skipped the committee's final session, on Saturday, December 12, when legislators approved a fourth article of impeachment and completed their misbegotten task.

From the Army-McCarthy hearings to Watergate, from the funeral of John F. Kennedy to the testimony of Oliver North, television has excelled at creating a sense of shared community during times of national crisis. Today, unfortunately, network executives would rather send civic-minded viewers to cable television, where the proceedings have been carried live on C-SPAN and on the 24-hour news channels, than interrupt the flow of profits.

Trouble is, only about 70 percent of the country's nearly 100 million households have cable, and about another 5 percent have satellite access. That leaves as many as 25 million households wholly dependent on broadcast television, with taxpayer-supported PBS the only network supposedly dedicated to people instead of profits. Yet the people's network carried only three of Judiciary's seven days of public hearings and deliberation: independent counsel Ken Starr's testimony, on November 19, and the president's two-day defense, on December 8 and 9.

Stu Kantor, PBS's director of corporate communications, defends his network's paltry offerings by arguing that The NewsHour, which produced the programs, has limited funds and manpower. Kantor notes that in addition to the three days of hearings, The NewsHour also produced a nightly one-hour wrap-up and covered impeachment during its regular show.

Asked about PBS's obligation to viewers, Kantor responds: "I think the obligation is to provide the information that people need to make an informed decision." Kantor and other PBS executives may believe they have provided that, but the lack of gavel-to-gavel coverage -- a striking departure from the great events of the past -- was a serious misstep.

Locally, WGBH-TV (Channels 2 and 44) shares some of the blame. 'GBH did carry one day more than PBS, running a raw pool feed on December 1, when constitutional experts such as presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned the committee that it was headed down the wrong path. But that was the only exception -- and even when 'GBH has carried the proceedings, it's only been from noon to 6 p.m., so as not to interfere with children's, educational, and other regularly scheduled programming.

"The feeling is that we're providing the best coverage we possibly can right now," says 'GBH spokeswoman Erin Martin.

That's just not good enough.

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