Battle for the soul of PBS

Smirking Chimp this morning is simply amazing. Every single article is worth reading and if you have time, I encourage you to go there and read them all. But I want to call your particular attention to three articles on the efforts by the right wing to take over public broadcasting. First we have a New York Times article by Stephen Labaton entitled, "A battle over right-wing programming at National Public Radio". It starts out this way:

Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.

The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.

Top officials at NPR and member stations are upset as well about the corporation's decision to appoint two ombudsmen to judge the content of programs for balance. And managers of public radio stations criticized the corporation in a resolution offered at their annual meeting two weeks ago urging it not to interfere in NPR editorial decisions.

The corporation's chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, has also blocked NPR from broadcasting its programs on a station in Berlin owned by the United States government.

Next we have an article by Michael D. Sorkin entitled, "Moyers defends PBS, takes aim at radical right". I admire Bill Moyers so much. He is simply not going down without a fight. He's at the age when he could reasonably just be retired and sit on the porch all day and nobody would fault him for it but he is passionately and fiercely defending the principles on which this nation was founded. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Bill Moyers denounced on Sunday the right wing and top officials at the White House, saying they are trying to silence their critics by controlling the news media.

He also took aim at reporters who become little more than willing government "stenographers." And he said the public increasingly is content with just enough news to confirm its own biases.

Moyers spoke in St. Louis at a conference on media reform. His reports have appeared on the Public Broadcasting System since the 1970s. He was an aide to President Lyndon Johnson and is a former newspaper publisher.

Moyers said those in power - government officials and their allies in the media - mean to stay there by punishing journalists "who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable."

Moyers described those officials as "obsessed with control" of the media. He said they are using the government "to threaten and intimidate.
...
"The more compelling our journalism, the angrier became the radical right of the Republican Party," he said."

That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth."

Finally, I give you an article from The Nation - also on the speech by Bill Moyers. The article is by John Nichols and is entitled, "Bill Moyers fights back".

Recalling former President Richard Nixon's failed attempt to cut the funding for public broadcasting in the early 1970s, Moyers said, "I always knew that Nixon would be back -- again and again. I just didn't know that this time he would ask to be the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

That was a pointed reference to Tomlinson, a Republican party stalwart, who contracted with an outside consultant to monitor Moyers's weekly news program for signs of what Tomlinson and his allies perceived to be liberal bias. Moyers ridiculed the initiative first by reading off a long list of conservatives who had appeared on NOW, then by reading a letter from conservative U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, praising the show, and finally by noting that Tomlinson had paid a former Bush White House aide $10,000 to do the monitoring."

Gee, Ken, for $2 a week you can pick up a copy of TV Guide," he joked, before suggesting that the CPB chair could have "watched the show."

"Hell, Ken," Moyers finally said. "you could have called me collect and I would have told you."

Moyers said he wasn't buying Tomlinson's claim that the results of the monitoring were not being released to protect PBS's image. "Where I come from in Texas, we shovel that stuff every day," said the man who came to Washington as a press aide to former President Lyndon Johnson and was present when the Public Broadcasting Act was written in the 1960s.

Moyers revealed to the crowd of 2,000 media reform activists that he had written Tomlinson on Friday, suggesting that the pair appear on a PBS program to discuss the controversy. He also revealed that he had tried three times to meet with the full CPB board but had been refused. Expressing his sense that the board had "crossed the line from resisting White House pressure to carrying it out," Moyers said, "I would like to give Mr. Tomlinson the benefit of the doubt, but I can't."

Ah, it's beautiful. When Bill Moyers does "snark", he does it so very, very well.

I don't know what we can do but email PBS and NPR and scream about this loudly. Whether it will do any good is impossible to tell. As for me, I no longer trust public broadcasting for accurate, objective news. There's already too much pandering to the right.