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By Joe Arney

If you get your headlines from NewsHour or stream Fresh Air on your ride to work, you have a little-known Colorado experiment to thank.

In the 1930s, the Rocky Mountain Radio Council wanted to reach every student working in mountain mines, to ensure they received the same public education opportunities as in Denver. The group hit on program transcriptions that could be relayed over the air鈥攂asically, pressing shellac records鈥攕o that a student working in remote Golconda Mine, in Hinsdale County, benefited from the same curriculum as his peers in Denver.

That local consortium eventually became the Public Broadcasting Service. And the focus on public education that gave it its start continues to differentiate the mission of public news networks.

鈥淚t was just by chance that I moved out here, and so I loved finding out that the inception moment for all noncommercial media was actually the mining communities,鈥� said Josh Shepperd, an associate professor of media studies at the 麻豆免费版下载鈥檚 College of Media, Communication and Information.

Last year, Shepperd published . It鈥檚 notable as the first academic attempt to present communication studies and public broadcasting as historically connected enterprises, and it comes at a time when criticism of the media鈥攅specially related to politics鈥攊s running especially hot. Shadow has since from the Broadcast Education Association and has been a finalist or runner up for prizes from four other organizations, including the American Journalism Historians Association and Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Not necessarily better鈥攂ut different

鈥淭his book isn鈥檛 about saying one mode of media is automatically better, or that public media is perfect or a corrective to commercial media,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut I do think public media is different because of its mission to provide a forum for every kind of voice.鈥�

That鈥檚 different from most commercial media, 鈥渨here the ethics are really tertiary to how the industry works. If there鈥檚 an audience for it, it鈥檚 good,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he idea that there is a necessity for every voice to be placed equally within a community is very important, even if I鈥檓 not sure that public media is always successful.鈥�

In some countries, 鈥減ublic media鈥� raises the specter of propaganda, like TASS or Xinhua. In the United States, PBS is insulated from such a threat, since affiliate stations don鈥檛 receive direct funding from the government.

鈥淭hat doesn鈥檛 mean they aren鈥檛 political, because they are,鈥� Shepperd said. But, he said, an endless news cycle revolving around politics and partisanship has warped the relationship between government and independent media: 鈥淓veryone keeps saying public media is too state based, but commercial media seems to be much more of a mouthpiece for politicians right now.鈥� 听

Spend a few minutes watching Fox News or MSNBC and you won鈥檛 disagree. For Shepperd, it鈥檚 another effect of a polarized media market 鈥渨here people think through the abstractions of their gatekeepers鈥� framing, instead of just looking at what鈥檚 in front of them in their own lives,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e allow issues of public interest to become obscured by demographic affiliations as we increasingly become categories and brands instead of people.鈥�

How we got to that point is part of Shepperd鈥檚 next project, which will examine the history of decision-making at media industries to better understand the mechanisms radio, television and digital players use to make tough calls about programming and advertising.

It鈥檚 a different thrust, but one that still hearkens back to his interest in uncovering and preserving the history of communication studies, which Shepperd called the only discipline that hasn鈥檛 completely traced its own history.

An accidental pathway

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 have a discipline that doesn鈥檛 know why it exists,鈥� he said. 鈥淯nderstanding that history gives us a sense of why we ask and answer the questions the way that we do, and helps us answer questions about the ethics of the discipline.鈥�

Shepperd got into this work almost by accident. He was studying theories around public life and civil society when a professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where he earned his PhD, inspired him to pursue his nascent interest in public broadcasting.

鈥淪he told me it was good to think about these ideas, but that you could actually have evidence, too,鈥� he said. 鈥淚n other words, the idea that how it works is just as fair of a question as how it should work.鈥�

He was able to put Wisconsin鈥檚 extensive archives to work for his thesis, which paved the way for the book project. Shepperd is now co-writing the official history of NPR and PBS for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

It鈥檚 fitting work, as before Shepperd dove into this subject in earnest, 鈥渘o one in the history of film and media studies or communication studies had ever asked where public media came from in scholarship,鈥� he said. Commercial media, by contrast, has been widely examined by experts and thought leaders, 鈥渁nd the idea that we wouldn't apply the same kind of investigation to the public system, I think, is an ideological issue that we need to face within communications research.鈥�