Re: [Swprograms] sorta OT: CPB meddling in PBS editorial policy

[Joe Buch <joseph.buch@xxxxxxx>]

At 10:53 PM 5/1/05 -0400, Richard Cuff wrote:

>Now the CPB, under Ken Tomlinson (where have I heard that name
>before?) wants to influence PBS editorial policy the same way the IBB
>has attacked the VOA.
>
CPB Board of Directors

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Chair
 
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson who served two years as director of the Voice of America in the Reagan administration, was elected chair of the CPB board in September 2003. Tomlinson retired as editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest in 1996 to pursue his lifelong interest in thoroughbred breeding and racing.

In 1999, Tomlinson was named president and director of the National Sporting Library in Middleburg. An appointment of President Clinton, he was confirmed as a member of the CPB Board in September 2000.

A native of Grayson County, Virginia, Tomlinson began his career in journalism working as a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1965. In 1968 he joined the Washington bureau of Reader's Digest.

He was a correspondent in Vietnam, and co-authored the book P.O.W., a history of American prisoners of war in Vietnam. In 1977 and 1978, he worked out of the Digest's Paris bureau covering events in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Tomlinson was director of the Voice of America from 1982 to 1984. In 1985 he was named chairman of the Nation Commission on Libraries and Information Science. The following year he was appointed to the U.S. Board for International Broadcasting where he served until 1994.

Following his work at VOA, Tomlinson returned to Reader's Digest as managing editor in 1984. He was named executive editor in 1985 and became editor-in-chief in 1989.

Tomlinson was the Virginia Press Association's Virginian of the Year in 1994 and is a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame.

He is married to Rebecca Moore Tomlinson, a former Congressional aide. They live at Springbrook Farm in Fauquier County, Virginia. They have two sons. William M. Tomlinson, a recent graduate of Vanderbilt University, works at CNN-Sports Illustrated in Atlanta. Lucas Y. Tomlinson is a first classman at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.

>The implication that there is a correlation between editorial policy
>and congressional funding support is troubling.
>

Such meddling is inevitable as long as Congress has a role in financing public broadcasting.  If PBS, and public radio stations were to cut their CPB funding, there would be no need to osculate the congressional bum.  My public radio station says they derive only 18% of the yearly operating budget from the federal government.  Many people who would otherwise financially support us say they already support us through their taxes.  In my opinion, if we could cut the financial ties that bind us to political whim, we would get more public contributions and public radio could become truly responsive to the listeners with little or no loss of program quality.

These days CPB is largely funding capital improvements to public TV stations so they can meet Congressional and FCC mandates to transition to digital transmission.  Who needs it?  Digital TV is simply a method to conserve spectrum so the government can sell off the space saved.  It does nothing for program quality.  It is a government mandated change that the government should be paying for in expectation of revenue from spectrum sales.

On the public radio side CPB is issuing grants to public stations to convert to IBOC.  Who needs it?  The 70+ dB dynamic range advertised for FM IBOC is wasted on 90% of the audience which is in cars.  Acoustic road noise effectively limits the real dynamic range the listener can use to about 30dB.  So IBOC must still compress the dynamic range to prevent road warriors from having to ride the volume control.  No gain for 90% of the listeners but considerable unnecessary expense for stations opting to adopt FM IBOC.

Tomlinson has long been near the root of the problem.

I found the following article pertinent to this subject:

Originally published in Current, Nov. 17, 2003
By Dan Odenwald

CPB should be given greater clout to hold producers responsible for biased and imbalanced news reporting, CPB Board member Cheryl Halpern told the Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month.

"There has to be recognition that an objective, balanced code of journalistic ethics has got to prevail across the board, and there needs to be accountability," Halpern said. When that fails, guilty parties need to be penalized, she added.

Halpern, a Republican fundraiser appointed to the CPB Board by President Bush last year, made the pitch for greater CPB authority during her Senate confirmation hearing Nov. 4 [2003]. The board member, given a recess appointment in August 2002, had not had a Senate hearing. Fellow nominee Beth Courtney, president of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, was also vetted by senators during the hearing. Action on the Halpern and Courtney confirmations is pending. 

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) raised the issue of political imbalance on public TV and radio, taking a shot at PBS's Now and its host, Bill Moyers.

"I certainly think he's the most partisan and nonobjective person I know in media of any kind," Lott said. He lambasted Moyers for his November 2002 election commentary, which bemoaned GOP policies and gains in both houses of Congress. "It's the most blatantly partisan, irresponsible thing I've ever heard in my life, and yet [CPB] has not seemed to be willing to deal with Bill Moyers and that type of programming," Lott said.

"The fact of the matter is, I agree," Halpern responded, who pointed to contradictory directives in the laws that govern CPB and explain the agency's inability to act. 

The Public Broadcasting Act calls on CPB to support programming that's objective and balanced, yet prohibits it from interfering with public TV and radio's programming decisions. "There is a conflict here," she said.

Halpern contrasted the oversight abilities of CPB with those of the government's Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), parent of Voice of America and other overseas services, on which she served between 1990 and 2002. 

Alumni of those overseas services are prominent at both CPB and NPR. New CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson chairs BBC (sic) as well and directed VOA during the Reagan administration; CPB Board member Ernest J. Wilson III was a U.S. Information Agency official during the Clinton years; CPB President Bob Coonrod was a longtime USIA executive; NPR President Kevin Klose was the BBG's top executive, and his deputy, Ken Stern, also worked there.

"When there were allegations of impropriety [at the BBG] in violation of the journalistic code of ethics," Halpern told the senators, "we were able to aggressively step in, review the transcript of the potential violation and initiate penalties. The CPB cannot in this construct similarly engage or penalize the individual licensees that choose to air programs, nor can we impact the individual programs because we are not the sole funders."

Halpern told the committee she has fielded complaints from her Jewish friends as well, who complain of pro-Palestinian bias on NPR. Halpern served as chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition since 1993 and is now an honorary chairman. "There's so very little that CPB can effectively do to correct the situation," she said.

"Going back to my BBG days, we were able to remove physically somebody who had engaged in editorialization of the news," she added.

"Was that man removed in handcuffs?" quipped Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.).

"No--it was a she--and she was given a desk job where she was not allowed to editorialize," Halpern answered.

Ideal: Lehrer's balance

CPB does, however, have the ability to aid programs selectively. It contributes nothing to Now, for example, but provided start-up cash for Tucker Carlson's new show, which PBS commissioned to counterbalance Moyers' program. 

Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) told Halpern that he'd explore her concerns in a CPB reauthorization hearing next year, though a Senate staffer said he has no immediate plans to tinker with CPB's authorizing language.

Bias is an issue "we hear about a lot on both sides of the spectrum," McCain said. "If Ms. Halpern's views are correct, and CPB has no influence over that, what's the point of having a board of directors?" 

Courtney questioned the need for Congress and CPB to get more involved in the programming decisions of public TV, arguing that viewers readily share their complaints about programs they think unfair.

"I guarantee you if there's a program that people are unhappy with, we'll hear about it," she told the committee. "I'm on ground zero responding to all these things."

"Moyers is a public TV celebrity with good reason, but his current effort is not balanced," Tomlinson told Current. "If a significant number of conservatives are saying public TV is not for them, we need to change that not by taking over programs but by achieving balance."

Tomlinson blames himself for not speaking out earlier against the Moyers show. He purposely stayed quiet to avoid controversy at a time when he thought pubcasters needed to be building support for public TV, he said.

Tomlinson doesn't want to push Moyers out of public TV, but he would like him to be more like Jim Lehrer, host of PBS's NewsHour, which goes to great lengths to balance its stories, he said. 

If public TV wants to preserve the Moyers approach, he said, it should offer a similar program from the right. "Let the people hear the different sides and make up their own minds," Tomlinson said.

PBS guidelines, which are derived from the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, guarantee objectivity across the schedule if not within a particular program, said PBS Chief Operating Officer Wayne Godwin. "Bill Moyers is a fine journalist and a proud part of what PBS offers," he said.

Excluding voices such as Moyers' wouldn't serve the public interest, Godwin added. PBS prefers to include voices, such as Carlson's, to expand the debate.

Tomlinson wants to convene meetings within pubcasting to debate objectivity and balance standards. CPB retains authority to call attention to biased reporting, he said. "If you don't want to see balance on public TV, we should take that word out of the law," he said.

Public TV lobbyists think any problems that arise should be handled internally. "Editorial independence for public TV is and always will be our highest priority," said APTS President John Lawson. "But the more these perceptions of imbalance are not addressed voluntarily by PTV, the more pressure there will be for some legislative intrusion into that process."

General managers should have the ultimate say about what goes on the air, Courtney told Current. At most stations, CPB grants represent a fraction of overall funding--not enough to give the corporation wide jurisdiction over program decisions, she said.

The confirmation hearing was clearly a preview of what pubcasters can expect to see in the CPB reauthorization process next year, Lawson said. As in the 1992 renewal of CPB's legislation, senators will want to have a long discussion about objectivity and balance, he predicted.

Web page posted Nov. 17, 2003
Current: the newspaper about public TV and radio in the United States
Current Publishing Committee, Washington, D.C.


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Joe Buch
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