| My! The Emperor is very well dressed today! |
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page C01
Liberal commentator Bill Moyers is out on PBS stations. Buster the animated rabbit is under a cloud of suspicion. And right-wing yakkers from the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been handed their own public-television chat show.
Left wing commentary - good, noble, virtuous. Right wing commentary - yakkers. Kinda says it all...
Some observers, including people inside the Public Broadcasting Service, see these recent developments as troubling.
| "Bob, I'm trouble by these developments!" "Are you an accredited observer, Herb?" |
For an organization that purports to be nonpartisan, this is rich. Anyone who can sit through Moyers' self-righteous gasbaggery surely knows better.
Officials at the agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, say they are merely seeking to ensure balance and fairness in the network's presentation of political news and ideas.
Fair and Balanced - now where have I heard that before? Not from PBS.
| Eventually, even the taxpayers are going to notice that it's MSNBC, only paid for with gummint money... |
Fred, got a picture of a baby crying? This article SCREAMS out for one!
| How about the baby snoozing? That's my reaction... |
Typically one of the quietest bureaucracies in Washington, the quasi-governmental CPB has been unusually Evidence of bias? I could dig it up with a pair of chopsticks.
In
| It's paid for by the public. Why shouldn't the public have control over it? |
Late last week, CPB's board declined to renew the contract of its chief executive, Kathleen Cox,
"Don't rock the boat, baby!!"
"We don't want to be alarmist, but I would be less than honest if I said there wasn't concern here," said one senior executive at PBS, who insisted on anonymity because
A test pattern, perhaps?
A senior FCC official, who would not speak for attribution because he must rule on issues affecting public broadcasting, went further, saying CPB "is engaged in a systematic effort not just to sanitize the truth, but to impose a right-wing agenda on PBS. It's almost like a right-wing coup. It appears to be orchestrated."
| Who was it that granted public terriblevision to the left as a fiefdom? Was the grant made in perpetuity? |
In an interview yesterday, CPB board chairman Ken Tomlinson called such comments "paranoia," and said critics of CPB's initiatives should "grow up."
Tomlinson's right. When the whiners offer little substantive criticism, as it has so far in this article, the adage 'put up or shut up' applies.
"We're only seeking balance," said Tomlinson. "I am concerned about perceptions that not all parts of the political spectrum are reflected on public broadcasting. [But] there are no hidden agendas."
PBS' liberal agenda hides in plain sight.
Asked for specific examples of slanted or unfair programming, Tomlinson declined to name any. "You've heard the same complaints of bias that I have in congressional hearings year after year," he said.
Translation - a list of complaints about their bias would read like War and Peace.
| Try listening to All Things Considered. That's the Classix Illustrated version... |
Let me ask something - If the lead paragraph refers to PBS' most prominent (former) host as 'liberal', how much more evidence is needed to prove there's liberal bias at PBS?
However, conservatives were exercised that Moyers -- an outspoken liberal
There it is, again!
-- was involved in hosting a weekly newsmagazine called "Now." (Moyers left the show in December, citing personal reasons.) PBS responded, in part, by trying to recruit Gingrich to host a weekly program. It wound up developing public affairs shows starring the Wall Street Journal's conservative pundits and Tucker Carlson, a columnist for the conservative Weekly Standard and a co-host of CNN's "Crossfire." (Carlson has since left PBS and CNN for a job at MSNBC.)
In January, PBS came in for more criticism, this time a rebuke from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings over an episode of a children's travelogue program in which a rabbit character named Buster paid a visit to two families headed by lesbians. PBS pulled the episode from distribution to stations around the country.
Hmmm... Heather does have two mommies!
Tomlinson would not comment on specific programs. He said CPB's efforts were aimed at making "incremental changes that meet the needs of the American people and the aspirations of the American people." Tomlinson, who ran the Voice of America during the Reagan administration and was formerly editor in chief of Reader's Digest, became chairman of CPB in September 2003.
If I was a PBS staffer, I'd be afraid, very afraid of someone with this resume. He sounds like Bolton - the Left's worst nightmare.
The corporation's own research indicates broad public satisfaction with the quality of news programming on PBS and NPR. How about independent research, cuz, like, we don't trust yours? A series of focus group sessions and two national surveys conducted by two polling firms -- the Tarrance Group and Lake Snell Perry & Associates -- found few perceptions of bias in PBS's or NPR's reporting in 2002 and 2003. Um... who did you ask? For example, among people who identified themselves as "news and information consumers," 36 percent said PBS's coverage of the Bush administration in 2003 was "fair and balanced," and 46 percent offered no opinion. Eleven percent judged NPR's coverage of the Middle East to be biased, and this group split almost equally between those who felt NPR was biased toward Israel and those who felt it was biased toward the Arab or Palestinian side.
Oh, so things are Fair and Balanced at PBS. Never mind!
Wayne Godwin, PBS's veteran chief operating officer, said in an interview yesterday that he wanted to give CPB's new chief executive, Ferree, some time before he drew conclusions. "They're in such a significant state of flux at this time that we want to be fair in looking at it," he said.
"I want to keep my cushy job!"
He added, "I don't know that Ken [Tomlinson] is or is not trying to change our programming. . . . I will say there is reason to remain aware and vigilant to what is going on. The long run will determine if he wants changes."
"But I'm updating my resume, just in case..."
Tomlinson said his goal is to seek
Just pull the freakin' plug already - LET THE MARKET DECIDE.