Molly Ivins: Destroying PBS

[Dudley_DUright]

I was watching the PBS science program "Nova" the other night and spotted the liberal bias right away. I knew it would be there because Ken Tomlinson, the Bush-appointed chairman of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), says the network is riddled with leftist leanings. Sure enough, in a program on tsunamis and what causes them, the show blamed it on shifting tectonic plates in the earth's surface. Then the graphic shows these two tectonic plates grinding against each other -- suddenly, the one on the left sort of falls down, and the big, aggressive plate on the right jumps on top of it, causing a killer tsunami. See? Wouldn't have happened on Fox.

Sounds like Hannity and Colmes to me. :evilgrin:

I have listened patiently to years of right-wing bull about liberal bias in the media, but let us be perfectly clear about what is happening at PBS. Big Bird is not in favor of affirmative action. Bert and Ernie are not gay. Miss Piggy is not a feminist. "The Three Tenors," "Antiques Roadshow," "Masterpiece Theater," "Wall Street Week" and nature programs do not have a political agenda. "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" is biased in favor of boring, old, white guys who appear on painfully well-balanced panels. "Washington Week in Review" is a showcase for "Inside the Beltway," conventional wisdom, power-parroting, political-geekhead, Establishment journalism -- there is nothing liberal about it.

But there is a plot to politicize public broadcasting. It is plain as a pikestaff, and it is coming from the Right. It is obvious, undeniable and happening right now. The Bush administration is introducing a political agenda to public broadcasting. They are using the lame pretext that PBS is somehow liberal to justify it into a propaganda organ for the government. That is precisely what the board of CPB was set up to prevent 40 years ago; it is there to be a firewall between public broadcasting and political pressure. Ken Tomlinson is a disgrace to the purpose of that board, he has a political agenda and is engaging in a raw display of ideological bullying. The right-wingers in the House of Representatives are backing his power play with a threat to cut off funding for PBS entirely.

Tomlinson's claim of liberal bias at PBS is based on the program "NOW with Bill Moyers," even though Moyers' program frequently featured guests on the Right. Moyers is now retired, and the show has been cut to half an hour. Tomlinson "balanced" it with a weekly program by the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal, who don't even bother to pretend to be objective: They are right-wing beyond argument. Tomlinson actually spent $10,000 of the taxpayers' money to pay some consultant to find bias in Moyers' program but has never released the results of that "study."

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19209

[RethugAssKicker]

1. We have got to put a stop to this..

RW onslaught.. Nothing is sacred... They want it ALL!... What these bastards also find offensive is shows such as NOVA, that give scientific (rather than christian) explanations for subjects such as : The origin of life, the bing bang theory, Evolution... etc.. etc.. They have also had shows on that does an intellectual analysis of home grown terrorism and stem cell research....

Basically its an assault on intelligence.

WE MUST FIND A WAY TO STOP THESE MORONS!!!.

[Dudley_DUright]

2. I agree

As a physics professor, I often use NOVA programs in my course on Cosmology (Big Bang Theory). These people want to re-fight the enlightenment.

[depakid]

3. They've already refought the enlightenment- and won

The vast majority of Americans doesn't even know what the enlightenment is- and doesn't evince even a modest understanding of the basic laws of thermodynamics.

Sorry prof- but in my dealings with grad students (among them Doctors and advanced nurses) the number who actually understand basic civics is remarkably small. Sure, some can write an article and maybe get published in a biomedical journal, but they wouldn't know Locke, Rousseau and Montesquieu from the three stooges-

[adnelson60087]

7. I teach high school chemistry and astronomy

and you are correct. The Fundies want to overturn the enlightenment, and the battle is not going well for our side of Reason and Science. I firmly believe we are losing the grassroots battle here because the messages from the pulpit, which begins their indoctrination process from birth in many cases, are openly hostile to our worldview. It is VERY hard, as you know, to overcome 16+ yrs of emotional irrationality with one hand tied behind our backs...OH NO...HE SAID SOMETHING CONTRARY TO RELIGION!!!

The sad truth seems to be that the US is losing its role of science leadership, and once it's gone, it won't be easy to make up the difference. We may never recover, thanks to these sci-phobic nuts.

[Lisa]

8. they like "science" if it can build weapons and/or make money

Anything else -- particularly research that suggests we might be going about things the wrong way (like, I dunno, research into the harmful properties of organochlorines, or fossil fuel emissions?) is sidelined as "unreliable", "impractical" or "geeky".

I'm currently teaching a course about the humanistic side of science. A fair number of the students are into satellite mapping and cartography, and believed firmly that their field was absolutely free from any ideological influence. Have they ever gotten a shock over the past couple of weeks! We've been looking at who pays for the research, what kinds of topics get funded, what happens to the data and the analyses afterwards ... some of them are very uncomfortable with this, or outright dismissive, but I'm glad that others are asking questions.

[adnelson60087]

9. I am not familiar with these topics

could you go into some detail here? Thanks Lisa.

[Lisa]

10. cartography is basically mapmaking ...

That's been around for ages (e.g. that first map showing "America" from 1507 or so, which sold for a million bucks recently). It's been spiffed up recently with more precise technology such as GPS units, but the main principles still apply. We tend to think that maps are neutral authorities, but there'ss actually a lot of politics involved -- such as, why the Prime Meridian runs through London instead of Paris, Cairo, or Beijing. Mapmakers can influence people's impressions of the world by choosing different types of projections (the Mercator projection makes the northern hemisphere countries look large and dominant, for example) -- or emphasizing certain features with color and font size -- or by leaving some things out entirely. Mapping an area tends to convey a sense of "ownership", so countries like Canada were quick to chart areas that were in possible dispute (like the Arctic islands) as a way of "peeing in the corners".

There are some great examples from earlier times, of cartographers putting the Northwest Passage into maps even if they hadn't seen it, because they felt it had to be there (and it served as an incentive for governments/corporations to fund more exploration). Even if making up landforms is frowned on today, there are still lots of opportunities for data manipulation. See Mark Monmonier's "How to Lie With Maps" for some cool examples.

Satellite imagery (and remote sensing in general, which includes aerial photos) -- this is another way of collecting information about the earth's surface. It got underway in earnest in the 1970s, with the launch of Landsat. Lots of military applications (the US government reportedly restricts access to imagery during military operations -- sure, it's a way of protecting "national security", but it also means that critics can't access the images and contradict their assertions about who is doing what). Also, commercial issues are becoming more prominent.

One of my colleagues was trying to get hold of imagery for looking at deforestation patterns, and the prices were either prohibitive (so only people with big research grants could buy it) or companies were refusing to sell to people who might be critical of their corporate clients or owners. Ironic, because satellites were promoted as a way of improving our understanding of environmental and social issues, and increasing public access to data ... the woman next to me is reading this and laughing because she just spent 2 years trying to do a longitudinal study (over time) of urban sprawl, and found out that there were so many problems with the data that her end result was highly suspect and not publishable. The experts had originally told her that remote sensing would eliminate those difficulties -- instead, it created more of them.

I could go on, but there are probably others here with more experience -- I'll just say that these new kinds of "geomatics" technology (GIS, satellite images, etc.) have brought up some interesting issues in privacy, control, research priorities, and who's got the facilities/training. (Nadine Schuurman, Neil Smith, and a bunch of researchers have written about this, in various journals.)

[rodeodance]

11. yes--map-making--the making up of one wants to make visible.

[adnelson60087]

12. Thanks Lisa,

who actually manages the satellites needed to collect the deforestation data? I bet that could yield some interesting results. I can see why many corps would want that data to be held close to the vest.

[Lisa]

13. an additional wrinkle is that expertise in geomatics is now required ...

If one is applying for a position in something like historical or medical geography, often candidates are expected to be expert in ArcInfo or some other GIS system. Even if you are specializing in the epidemiology of AIDS, or the commodification of landscapes (e.g. how tourism development affects land use patterns), or the historical development of the Victorian-era "Garden Suburb" -- they still want you to know how to digitize maps, for example.

So people who have extensive backgrounds (and publications to match) in the humanities are often being overlooked, in favor of more recent graduates who've got a more technical/empirical bent. Not that this is always a bad thing (hey, some of my best friends are empiricists and positivists!), but at a recent faculty meeting, someone made the point that half our department didn't meet the technical requirements being advertised in our most recent job postings. This includes some award-winning profs who are exceptionally good lecturers, or who have extremely innovative work in areas like animal behaviour, environmental aesthetics and disaster planning. (The aesthetics guy doesn't even have a computer, let alone e-mail or ArcInfo.) Not just that, but many of the people who've got that highly-valued GIS expertise have had a couple of courses in how to use a current type of software, but nothing in research methods (which might give them experience in when NOT to use certain types of technology).

It's the old analogy about how everything looks like a nail, if the only tool you've got is a hammer. By focusing on computer-based geomatics to the exclusion of more qualitative techniques, it means that other ways of approaching problems (e.g. participant observation, or action research) never get explored or even taught. Turns out that there isn't any single technique that can fit the entire range of topics being studied by geographers -- and overlooking (or even denigrating) anything that doesn't match one particular mindset will not only narrow the discipline, but discourage more creative development of the software and hardware.

[Demeter]

4. "Where's a decent Republican when you need one? "

Molly--All the "decent" Republicans are dead--the ones who told Nixon where to get off. To call the GOP today Republican is to defile their memory. Call them Nazi Wannabes and be done with it.

[NMMNG]

5. You want the truth? You CAN handle the truth!

If a Rethug/right winger/fundie is claiming something is biased against them, it means that they don't get majority billing in it.

There, I've said it. Return to your regularly scheduled activities now.

[Catfight]

6. Our last chance to save our own country is to impeach Bush. nt