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PBS decides now is the time to ban new religious programming
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After reviewing a "never enforced" policy, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has banned member stations from carrying new religious TV programs; the few existing ones can continue, it was announced this week.
According to news reports, the stated reason for censoring new religious programming is that: (a) a ban on sectarian programming has been in place since 1985 but was never enforced, (b) PBS started to review its rules last year when the transition to digital TV was being contemplated, and (c) PBS expressed concerns that having religious programming may imply official endorsement.
Some of the reaction to this decision has been quite pointed.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue writes:
None of these reasons is persuasive.
A rule not enforced is a non-starter, much like jay walking statutes in New York—everyone knows that non-enforcement means it’s legal. Citing church and state concerns is pure bunk: there is no federal law banning religious programming by PBS. As for the review being sparked by the move to digital, the record shows that more was at work than this.
Michael Gerson of the Washington Post writes:
If its concern was constitutional -- a belief that publicly-funded institutions should never accommodate sectarian institutions -- then the decision was timid and hypocritical. If Catholic mass for shut-ins on PBS violates the separation of church and state, why isn’t existing programming banned? If it doesn’t violate the First Amendment, why forbid such shows in the future?
Gerson also pointed to the past PBS series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan.
Gerson continues...
Sagan’s clear purpose in that series was to promote naturalism. He began with the words, “The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.” This statement is not science; it is philosophy -- a kind of secular sectarianism. Nature can be studied with a telescope or a microscope. But naturalism can’t be demonstrated with such instruments. It is a faith -- more or less likely, according to our lights, but still a faith.
So why should the faith of naturalism be protected by a public commitment to pluralism, but not religious faiths?
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