The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS's news division

[Redfairen]

On December 18th, the Public Broadcasting Service’s flagship station WNET issued a press release announcing the launch of a new two-year news series entitled “The Pension Peril.” The series, promoting cuts to public employee pensions, is airing on hundreds of PBS outlets all over the nation. It has been presented as objective news on  major PBS programs including the PBS News Hour.

However, neither the WNET press release nor the broadcasted segments explicitly disclosed who is financing the series. Pando has exclusively confirmed that “The Pension Peril” is secretly funded by former Enron trader John Arnold, a billionaire political powerbroker who is actively trying to shape the very pension policy that the series claims to be dispassionately covering.

In recent years, Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushing lawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.

Despite Arnold’s pension-slashing activism and his foundation’s ties to partisan politics, Leila Walsh, a spokesperson for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), told Pando that PBS officials were not hesitant to work with them, even though PBS’s own very clear rules prohibit such blatant conflicts. (note: the term “PBS officials” refers interchangeably to both PBS officials and officials from PBS flagship affiliate WNET who were acting on behalf of the entire PBS system).


http://pando.com/2014/02/12/the-wolf-of-sesame-street-revealing-the-secret-corruption-inside-pbss-news-division/

[Armstead]

1. Oh who can you believe in anymore?

[840high]

3. No one.

[hunter]

2. We used to laugh at the Soviet Press...

... now we ourselves have got something more insidious.

[Cha]

5. I don't know if it's more "insidious" than the Soviet Union and

now Russia but I do know that I never laughed at the Soviet Press. It's horrible for them and it's tragic for us, too.

We fight it every single day with the NET/Social Media-Tweeters United!

[Cha]

4. Yep, who isn't on the

corporatemediawhore bandwagon.. would be the shortest list.

Thank you for Rachel, Chris Hayes, Steve Kornacki, LO'D, Rev Al, etc etc, Universe.. I don't have tv so I'm sure I'm missing a couple anyway.

thanks Redfairen

[malletgirl02]

6. Slightly off topic Downton Abbey

I always had a tinfoil hat theory that PBS was suing Downton Abbey to soften our opinion towards the 1%. This shows maybe my theroy wasn't so tin foil after all.

[freshwest]

8. Didn't see that series, but watched many others and they seemed to reinforce the master and servant

Last edited Fri Feb 14, 2014, 01:54 AM - Edit history (1)

class thing out of what seemed to be Victorian era nostalgia. A great deal of that was probably unpalatable in the UK's socialist democracy.

I thought later, but not during my youth, that their accent on the ruling class was conditioning. It engrained acceptance for that social structure, by portraying it as antique, somewhat romantic and colorful but for those who were not advantaged it was anything but.

They also made the middle ages, Greek and Roman empires look more natural and free, pure and philosophically. Just ignore the slaves that gave the leisure to come up with all that rot, never mind all of that stuff.

Combine that with some religous groups here and you have a class of people who adore royalty. It's not about equality but a stability built for the 1% at the expense of those whose lives were more chaotic and shorter due to being used for that stability. Accepting it, as a harsh fact of life is made to look bearable in more bucolic settings and all of that.

At least the English working class kept a consciousness that did empower them, despite their disadvantaged status, but now it's gone so far over the edge they've broken that pride.

PBS had a conservative bent with a genteel touch on the weekends that I watched as a kid. It was Buckley, and later McLaughlin and bunch (whatever). They were the pre-Fox news era and made the case that conservatives were intelligent, serious and worldly that we now know tas nothing but know nothing bullies.

And you know that they were always funded by the Koch brothers and foundations that turned out to be less of charity and more of tax evasion devices in the long run. The more public funding that PBS lost, the more independence it lost until now I have no idea what it's about.

I agree with you, that is to say.

[Triana]

7. Between this and the Kochs

I think we can safely say PBS isn't Public anymore. It's owned & controlled - like the rest of the media - by wealthy, private interests.

[burrowowl]

9. K&R

[Enthusiast]

10. The media is now wall to wall propaganda.

Just horrible.

[alp227]

11. So the NewsHour is not reliable?

The fact that programming can be politically bribed is why PUBLIC BROADCASTING NEEDS PUBLIC FUNDING so that it remains a PUBLIC service. Thanks, Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America!