ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as a brief snapshot of a work in progress. Our purpose is to examine selected primary documents from the public broadcasting community and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in various policy matters, in order to determine the underlying values that drive the arguments advanced and the decisions set forth. Our approach can be described as a critical close reading of these documents, as a means to determine the extent to which the actual language used is consistent with the existing broader critique of public broadcasting's continued disenfranchisement. We situate our analysis within contemporary critical writings that afford a basis for interpretation. Our objective is to offer a context for this study, to provide some examples of the kinds of documents under review, to suggest some preliminary findings, and then to relate them to larger discussions about contemporary public broadcasting.
