Public broadcasting and educational television are struggling to define themselves. Public broadcasting represents our common search for meaning through our efforts at forming and experiencing images. The brief declaration for "freedom" and "imagination" written by Congress into the public broadcast law forms a symbolic utterance expressing the spirit of democratic man as the creative seeker of meaning. The greatest danger to this spirit comes from the broadcast organizations themselves, and the danger of institutionalization and bureaucratization. Perhaps an answer to this is continual examination of how public broadcasting is meeting the public interest. But it is insufficient to say the public interest consists in what is interesting. Neither can we claim the public interest is simply a fair representation of various idealogies. To all of these must be added the need for philosophical and spiritual inquiry, to produce sights generative of insights. (MG)