Programs/Content
Journalism initiative aims to re-energize local coverage around the country
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Three public broadcasters and the nonprofit newsroom Mississippi Today will host reporters from the program’s inaugural class.
Development
With new MPB offering, donors can support pubmedia through credit, debit purchases
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Mississippi Public Broadcasting is the first public media organization to work with Softgiving, a financial technology company that lets donors round up payments and give the change to nonprofits.
System/Policy
As spectrum auction winds down, some public TV stations must plan moves to new channels
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State networks in Maryland and Mississippi are among those facing big engineering projects.
Ethics in Public Media
With growing emphasis on social media, MPB requires more staff to adhere to ethics code
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As a state-owned public broadcasting network, MPB has to ensure that its content is impeccably fair and accurate.
People
Public radio provides “lifeline,” direction for renowned lawyer Dickie Scruggs
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Listening to public radio while doing time connected Dickie Scruggs to the outside world and his former life.
System/Policy
State cuts support to Mississippi Public Broadcasting
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State funding made up about 65 percent of MPB’s budget this fiscal year.
Programs/Content
Two public TV networks decline to air POV documentary After Tiller
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At least two public television networks opted not to air this week the POV documentary After Tiller, which profiles four late-term abortion providers and prompted a campaign among anti-abortion organizations. POV’s plans to air the film’s national broadcast premiere at 10 p.m. Sept. 1 spurred an Aug. 27 online statement from Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, who called the documentary “nothing short of pure propaganda intended to demonize the entire pro-life movement and drum up support for late-term abortion.” Several other anti-abortion websites urged visitors to contact PBS headquarters or PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler to protest stations airing the film. South Carolina ETV in Columbia and Mississippi Public Broadcasting in Jackson declined to air After Tiller.
System/Policy
Mississippi boosts state aid to pubcasting after half-decade of cuts
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MPR credits successful legislative outreach and a state revenue increase for its nine-percent aid bump.
Programs/Content
Fresh Air returning to daytime in Mississippi
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Fresh Air will air during daytime hours on MPB’s Think Radio network for the first time since 2010, when the network’s then–Executive Director Judith Lewis took the interview show off the air, citing concerns about host Terry Gross’s discussion of sex with her guests.
Programs/Content
MPB fires reporter for leaking Fresh Air memo
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There’s one more voice that’s off the air of Mississippi Public Broadcasting following the state network’s cancellation of Fresh Air. Carl Gibson, whose first job out of journalism school was covering the state capitol for MPB, was fired on Friday for leaking an internal memo about the state network’s decision to drop the NPR-distributed show. Gibson was just returning from an assignment covering the Gulf Coast oil spill, he said, when controversy over MPB’s cancellation erupted over the blogosphere on July 15. Friends at the Jackson Free Press, the state’s only alternative newspaper, approached Gibson as a source, and he wanted to help them get the story straight, he told Current. The Free Press’s July 16 story points to the discrepancy between MPB Executive Director Judith Lewis’s official statement describing the “careful consideration and review” given to the decision to drop Fresh Air and the email that Gibson leaked, which was written by MPB Radio Director Kevin Farrell shortly after the axe came down.
Programs/Content
MPB listeners, blogosphere want to know: What’s inappropriate about ‘Fresh Air’?
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Why did Mississippi Public Broadcasting drop Fresh Air from its radio schedule? The blog “A Unitarian Universalist Minister in the South” set off a blogosphere chain reaction yesterday by speculating that the “recurring inappropriate content” cited by MPB Radio Director Kevin Farrell must be the show’s willingness to treat homosexuals as normal people, not the “evil incarnate bent on destroying the American dream, baseball and apple pie, too.” MPB Executive Director Dr. Judith Lewis didn’t get into the details in a statement issued late yesterday, after Gawker and the Huffington Post had picked up on the story. “Too often Fresh Air’s interviews include gratuitous discussions on issues of an explicit sexual nature. We believe that most of these discussions do not contribute to or meaningfully enhance serious-minded public discourse on sexual issues,” she said.