In our digital media age, public broadcasting needs to extend its traditional mission of noncommercial, educational service for all Americans. The following values form the core of public broadcasting's mission. They must all be fulfilled in order to provide the public with the media we deserve.

Localism
Noncommercial media must serve local communities, involve a range of community members and focus on the issues that matter most at the local level. Programming should be produced by and for local communities. Local broadcasters should partner with community institutions to enrich and expand learning and involvement in public affairs, science, arts and culture. The work of local, independent media producers is a crucial tool for challenging and changing our corporate media structure, giving voice to those who aren't heard in mainstream media and creating an informed public.

Diversity
Noncommercial programming should reflect the diversity of the communities it serves. Considering how communities of color historically have been portrayed in the media and have been largely excluded from media ownership, it is vital that people of color are both well-represented in noncommercial media and deeply involved in its production. To this end, public broadcasting must ensure that diverse local voices have access to the media. Noncommercial media must serve the entire community.

Independence
Noncommercial media should offer challenging, independent and alternative sources of programming, not mimic corporate media. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's principal mission is to insulate public broadcasting from the politics of governmental budgeting and appropriations -- to, in the words of the drafters of the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act -- create "an instrument for the free communication of ideas in a free society."

Noncommercialism
As expected, noncommercial media should air without advertising. Faced with growing financial pressure and diminished public funding, PBS programming is increasingly supported by "underwriting credits." While these "credits" air for only a fraction of the time of ads on the major networks or cable TV, they represent the front edge of the creeping commercialization of public broadcasting. If allowed to spread, advertising can undermine PBS's sources of public financial support. PBS, like other noncommercial media, should examine its mission and ensure that it stays within its bounds, especially with regard to children's programming.

Public Service
Noncommercial media should live up to the words of Bill Siemering, co-founder of NPR: "[Public broadcasting] will serve the individual; it will promote personal growth rather than corporate gains; it will regard the individual differences among men with respect and joy rather than derision and hate; it will celebrate the human experience as infinitely varied rather than vacuous and banal; it will encourage a sense of active, constructive participation, rather than apathetic helplessness."

Balance and Impartiality
Balanced, nonpartisan programming and impartiality are key elements of public broadcasting's mission and an essential measure of success for noncommercial media. Public broadcasting, among other media, will only be trusted as long as it remains free of influence from the White House, Congress, the Department of Education, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and corporate funders.

Education
Public broadcasting is the only national resource that uses the power of the public airwaves to educate, enlighten, engage and inform. Because of its public service mission, public broadcasting plays an essential role in the cluttered media landscape. And with its local ownership structure, public broadcasting provides a necessary antidote to a commercial media system that continues to consolidate its control of media across the country. Public broadcasting's array of educational services can engage media makers in their communities, creating educational content that responds to the needs of local citizens and their children.