PBS used Conservative Group to Moniter Bill Moyers

[tishaLA]

A researcher retained secretly by the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to monitor the "Now" program with Bill Moyers for political objectivity last year, worked for 20 years at a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union and a conservative columnist, an official at the journalism center said on Monday.

The decision by the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, to retain the researcher, Fred Mann, without the knowledge of the corporation's board, to report on the political leanings of the guests of "Now" is one of several issues under investigation by the corporation's inspector general.

At the request of two Democratic lawmakers, investigators are examining whether Mr. Tomlinson has violated any rules as he has sought, he says, to ensure that public television and radio provide greater program balance.

One of Mr. Tomlinson's Democratic critics, Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, called on him to resign on Monday. "As a result of your recent attempts to inject partisan politics into the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I am writing to urge you to step down as chairman," Mr. Lautenberg wrote. "Your conduct has undermined the C.P.B. and its mission of quality public broadcasting free of political interference. Under current circumstances, with investigations of your conduct pending, it is hardly possible for you to effectively carry out your duties as chairman of the C.P.B." <...>
NY Times

[oc2002]

1. amen. that guy is a scurrilous partisain scum bag.

[Double T]

2. Everyone in this country better be damn concerned about how......

serious things are getting, if you thought it couldn't get any worse, it just did. The House of Representatives just voted to cut $100 million in funding to PBS, including cuts in funding of children's programs. One way or the other the Neocons will get their way and the only thing that will stop them is US!!! Our country continues to be under siege from the right wingers, if we don't take action eventually there will only be Christian broadcasting stations!!! The bastards keep cutting programs for this country to fund the illegitimate war of the mindless shrub.

[Evergreen Emerald]

3. I agree... this is part of the PNAC attack

We have no free press. Any semblance of impartiality is viewed as "liberal." Tomlinson is part of the attack machine, not an isolated nutjob. Their agenda will be fulfilled, and to do so requires propoganda (because with truth they will fail. The mainstream media is dead. PBS / NPR are on their way. Internet is next.

They are toppling one by one social security / retirement programs / healthcare / environment / education / fundaments of democracy (like separation of church and state, due process)/world bank / United Nations--the list is endless. And all the while the press is mute.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Bill's thoughts on the importance of PBS

That Americans are citizens and not just consumers; in the words of the educator Herbert Kohl, “if we do not provide time for the consideration of people and events in depth, we may end up training another generation of TV adults who know what kind of toilet paper to buy, who know how to argue and humiliate others, but who are thoroughly incapable of discussing, much less dealing with, the major social and economic problems that are tearing America apart.”

Those of us who helped launch public broadcasting were not disdainful of commercial television. We ourselves tuned to it for news, diversion and amusement. We knew that it helped to keep the economy dynamic through the satisfaction or creation of appetites. We are a capitalist society, after all. The market is a cornucopia of goods and services, and television programs are part of that market. There is always something to sell, and television can sell. But public television was meant to do what the market will not do. From the outset we believed there should be one channel not only free of commercials but from commercial values; a channel that does not represent an economic exploitation of life; whose purpose is not to please as many consumers as possible, in order to get as much advertising as possible, in order to sell as many products as possible; one channel—at least one—whose success is measured not by the numbers who watch but by the imprint left on those who do.

http://www.freepress.net/news/8639