PBS | Ombudsman | Archive | January 2013 Archives

January 31, 2013

Drones Are Real. So Are Perceptions.

PBS's long-running and award-winning science series, NOVA, aired an hour-long documentary last week on the rapid increase in the development and use of unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly called drones. It was titled, appropriately, "Rise of the Drones." If you... More »

January 25, 2013

The Mailbag: Ask Not What Larry Can Do For You . . .

It has ever been so that non-commercial public broadcasting has had a problem at times with seeming, well, at least a little bit, commercial. The vast majority of funding comes from voluntary contributions to stations from viewers like you, member-station... More »

January 23, 2013

'This Show Needs To Be Aired Again and Again Until . . .'

This is just a brief posting to reinforce a couple of points I've made many times in this space over the years. One is that viewers tend to write to an ombudsman to complain rather than to praise. Another has... More »

January 17, 2013

The Mailbag: Did You Need to Know This About Taxes?

As tax time and the debt ceiling bear down on Americans, PBS's weekly public affairs program Need to Know aired a timely episode last Friday on the debate about "whether the tax laws themselves are fair. Why, for instance," program... More »

January 11, 2013

Michelle Rhee: Reformer, Zealot, Both or Something Else?

This past Tuesday evening, Jan. 8, PBS's top-rated documentary series Frontline, focused its cameras and its veteran education correspondent, John Merrow, on a now 43-year-old Korean-American woman named Michelle Rhee. She was the chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public school... More »

Archive

January 2013