I hope that US members of AIR would consider lending an academic's voice to the support for creative, diverse documentaries, which Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) just used as a reason to defund public broadcasting. All the info is in this release <http://www.indiecaucus.org/blog/2017/4/6/indiecaucusresponsetocongress> from the International Documentary Association and Indiecaucus. I'm on the board of the Independent Television Service and have seen all these films, which are sterling examples of experiential documentaries about complex and underreported issues. I also, like some of you, have spent way too much time learning endless acronyms in an attempt to understand how public media function in the media flows that inform, or don't, our civil societies. The studies Caty Borum Chattoo and I recently did on diversity in US documentary programming are referred to in the release. While this is to one side of strictly academic issues, I hope that it will be seen as an acceptable post, given the connection between public media practice and research. Thank you. -- Patricia Aufderheide, Fulbright Senior Fellow 2017 Queensland University of Technology and University Professor and Founder Center for Media & Social Impact, School of Communication American University 4400 Massachusetts Av., NW American University, Washington, DC 20016-8017 McKinley Hall 323 @paufder @cmsimpact cmsimpact.org paufder@american.edu 202-643-5356 Sample *Reclaiming Fair Use! * <http://cmsimpact.org/reclaiming> Order Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright, University of Chicago Press, 2011. <http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Fair-Use-Balance-Copyright/dp/0226032280/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1321544105&sr=8-2>