Legislative livestreams provided by SDPB are vital to keep public informed about lawmaking
Editorial By Dana Hess, South Dakota Searchlight
During my newspaper career I was tasked with writing five editorials a week. Consequently, I wasn’t choosy about revisiting some subjects. If it was in the news, it was fair game for an editorial. Fortunately for me, the Public Broadcasting Service was in the news a few times a year, so I grew accustomed to commenting about it often. I was not a fan.
I wasn’t like those conservatives who railed against what they perceived as Public Broadcasting’s left-leaning news coverage. My opposition was economic.
In addition to government funding, PBS makes its money through donations from viewers, charitable organizations and businesses. However, the recognition of business donations supporting certain programs serves as a commercial message. Gone are the days when just a donor’s company name would be mentioned. Now we sit through a slogan, a list of services, an accounting of business awards. In other words, it’s a commercial on a government-funded, supposedly commercial-free network.
PBS fans may be able to accept that, but it didn’t seem right to me that the newspaper I worked for, which was reliant on advertising, should be in competition for ads with an entity that was supported by the government. My own tax dollars were being used against my employer. It didn’t seem fair.
My personal experience with PBS wasn’t a good one, either. It seemed every time I settled in to watch a program on South Dakota Public Broadcasting it was during Pledge Week. Consequently, my attempt to watch The Highwaymen in concert was halted every couple of songs by hosts with an agenda. First, they would congratulate viewers for having the good taste to watch the program they had just interrupted. Then they would explain that this was just a sample of the good programming that needed my support.
Eventually there would be a pitch for money, usually tied to some sort of swag. During Highwaymen Interruptus they offered a CD for a smaller donation, a boxed set for a larger donation. I think the really big donors got all that and a concert-worn Highwaymen bandana with that authentic Willie Nelson dressing room aroma. Just when I thought it was time to get back to Waylon and Johnny, the hosts would go through the whole spiel again.
It left me hoping that there was an even more generous donation level. If I could afford to write a really, really big check, I’d be allowed to go to the home of one of the hosts and interrupt him while he tried to watch TV.
As you can see, I still have issues.
Given my problematic experience with SDPB, you’d probably think I would welcome the news that Gov. Kristi Noem wants to cut that entity’s budget by $3.6 million. With the state looking down the barrel of sluggish sales tax receipts and a commitment to an almost $1 billion prison project, something had to go. If Noem has her way, she’ll shut down “Sesame Street” and board up “Downton Abbey.”
Public broadcasting in South Dakota is more than just TV and radio programming. One of the often overlooked offerings of SDPB is its wall-to-wall broadcasts of the happenings in the state Legislature. SDPB makes available, over the internet, every committee meeting as well as all the floor action in the House and Senate.
This isn’t one guy with a microphone running around the Capitol, but rather a sophisticated system that allows the internet broadcast of more than 40 committee hearings per week as well as all eight weekly sessions of the House and Senate.
Because of its partnership with SDPB, the workings of Legislature are tremendously transparent. Using the Legislative Research Council website, it’s possible to track legislation and know when it’s coming up for discussion in committee. That committee hearing will be broadcast by SDPB. No matter where they are in the state, it’s possible for citizens to track legislation they’re interested in through committees in both chambers as well as floor action in the House and Senate.
I know that system works because I used it. I stayed away from the Capitol during the COVID-19 pandemic, but worked as a freelance reporter for the Rapid City Journal. From my desk in Brookings I was able to monitor the progress of bills of interest to West River readers. From the meetings I monitored over the internet I was able to write stories about a visitors’ center at Custer State Park, funding for the Liberty Wellness Center at Box Elder and funding for a hangar area at Rapid City Regional Airport. I’m not particularly tech savvy. If I can track legislation using this system, any citizen can.
Lawmakers can’t afford to build such a wonderful way for citizens to track their Legislature and then shut it down in the name of budget cuts. It’s hard to put a price tag on the government accountability and transparency that the SDPB system brings to the legislative process.
If the Legislature goes through with the cuts proposed by Noem, I may find myself in an untenable position. After years of grousing about the unfairness of government-funded competition for newspapers, I may be in the seemingly hypocritical position of having to make a donation to SDPB. I hope they still have some of those bandanas.
Dana Hess spent more than 25 years in South Dakota journalism, editing newspapers in Redfield, Milbank and Pierre. He's retired and lives in Brookings, working occasionally as a freelance writer.
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence.
