Financially independent public broadcasting best yields prosocial children’s programming.

Evidence

The creation of Sesame Street and its broadcast on public television changed all that. It entertained and educated generations of children both at home and abroad in partnership with foreign producers tailoring the program to their cultural interests. Close collaboration between producers and social scientists served the dual purpose of enhancing the quality of children’s programming and furthering understanding of how television can promote positive child development. Research on other children’s programs on public television, featuring the creative and prosocial aspects of children’s lives, verifies their beneficial effects (Johnston & Ettema, 1986). A financially secure public broadcasting system, free of sponsor pressures, is perhaps the best vehicle for providing the quality children’s programming that the commercial networks shun. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 995

Categorization

• SEED: Sesame Street as proof positive of the attractive-alternative principle offers an essay angle contrasting public-funding successes with commercial failure to self-regulate.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 995