[Swprograms] Rich on PBS/NPR and Tomlinson

[John Figliozzi <jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The always on-the-mark Frank Rich, the Sunday New York Times columnist, 
turned his attention today to the recent dust-up over public 
broadcasting in the U.S.  His analysis is once again spot-on.  Key 
quote from the article: "Mr. Tomlinson's real, not-so-hidden agenda is 
to enforce a conservative bias or, more specifically, a Bush bias.  To 
this end he has not only turned CPB into a full-service employment 
program for apparatchiks but also helped initiate "The Journal 
Editorial Report", the only public broadcasting show ever devoted to a 
single newspaper's editorial page, that of the zealously pro-Bush Wall 
Street Journal.  Unlike Mr. Moyer's "Now"--which routinely balanced its 
host's liberalism with conservative guests like Ralph Reed, Grover 
Norquist, Paul Gigot and Cal Thomas--The Journal's program does not 
include liberals of comparative stature.  This is all in keeping with 
Mr. Tomlinson's long career as a professional propagandist..."

--------

June 26, 2005
The Armstrong Williams NewsHour

By FRANK RICH
HERE'S the difference between this year's battle over public 
broadcasting and the one that blew up in Newt Gingrich's face a decade 
ago: this one isn't really about the survival of public broadcasting. 
So don't be distracted by any premature obituaries for Big Bird. Far 
from being an endangered species, he's the ornithological equivalent of 
a red herring.

Let's not forget that Laura Bush has made a fetish of glomming onto 
popular "Sesame Street" characters in photo-ops. Polls consistently 
attest to the popular support for public broadcasting, while Congress 
is in a race to the bottom with Michael Jackson. Big Bird will once 
again smite the politicians - as long as he isn't caught consorting 
with lesbians.

That doesn't mean the right's new assault on public broadcasting is 
toothless, far from it. But this time the game is far more insidious 
and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to 
castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs 
operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White 
House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers' expense. If you 
liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations - 
or thrilled to the "journalism" of Armstrong Williams and other 
columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies - 
you'll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and 
radio.

There's only one obstacle standing in the way of the coup. Like Richard 
Nixon, another president who tried to subvert public broadcasting in 
his war to silence critical news media, our current president may be 
letting hubris get the best of him. His minions are giving any 
investigative reporters left in Washington a fresh incentive to follow 
the money.

That money is not the $100 million that the House still threatens to 
hack out of public broadcasting's various budgets. Like the theoretical 
demise of Big Bird, this funding tug-of-war is a smoke screen that 
deflects attention from the real story. Look instead at the seemingly 
paltry $14,170 that, as Stephen Labaton of The New York Times reported 
on June 16, found its way to a mysterious recipient in Indiana named 
Fred Mann. Mr. Labaton learned that in 2004 Kenneth Tomlinson, the Karl 
Rove pal who is chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 
clandestinely paid this sum to Mr. Mann to monitor his PBS bête noire, 
Bill Moyers's "Now."

Now, why would Mr. Tomlinson pay for information that any half-sentient 
viewer could track with TiVo? Why would he hire someone in Indiana? Why 
would he keep this contract a secret from his own board? Why, when a 
reporter exposed his secret, would he try to cover it up by falsely 
maintaining in a letter to an inquiring member of the Senate, Byron 
Dorgan, that another CPB executive had "approved and signed" the Mann 
contract when he had signed it himself? If there's a news story that 
can be likened to the "third-rate burglary," the canary in the coal 
mine that invited greater scrutiny of the Nixon administration's 
darkest ambitions, this strange little sideshow could be it.

After Mr. Labaton's first report, Senator Dorgan, a North Dakota 
Democrat, called Mr. Tomlinson demanding to see the "product" Mr. Mann 
had provided for his $14,170 payday. Mr. Tomlinson sent the senator 
some 50 pages of "raw data." Sifting through those pages when we spoke 
by phone last week, Mr. Dorgan said it wasn't merely Mr. Moyers's show 
that was monitored but also the programs of Tavis Smiley and NPR's 
Diane Rehm.

Their guests were rated either L for liberal or C for conservative, and 
"anti-administration" was affixed to any segment raising questions 
about the Bush presidency. Thus was the conservative Republican Senator 
Chuck Hagel given the same L as Bill Clinton simply because he 
expressed doubts about Iraq in a discussion mainly devoted to praising 
Ronald Reagan. Three of The Washington Post's star beat reporters (none 
of whom covers the White House or politics or writes opinion pieces) 
were similarly singled out simply for doing their job as journalists by 
asking questions about administration policies.

"It's pretty scary stuff to judge media, particularly public media, by 
whether it's pro or anti the president," Senator Dorgan said. "It's 
unbelievable."

Not from this gang. Mr. Mann was hardly chosen by chance to assemble 
what smells like the rough draft of a blacklist. He long worked for a 
right-wing outfit called the National Journalism Center, whose 
director, M. Stanton Evans, is writing his own Ann Coulteresque book to 
ameliorate the reputation of Joe McCarthy. What we don't know is 
whether the 50 pages handed over to Senator Dorgan is all there is to 
it, or how many other "monitors" may be out there compiling potential 
blacklists or Nixonian enemies lists on the taxpayers' dime.

We do know that it's standard practice for this administration to purge 
and punish dissenters and opponents - whether it's those in the 
Pentagon who criticized Donald Rumsfeld's low troop allotments for Iraq 
or lobbying firms on K Street that don't hire Tom DeLay cronies. We 
also know that Mr. Mann's highly ideological pedigree is typical of CPB 
hires during the Tomlinson reign.

Eric Boehlert of Salon discovered that one of the two public ombudsmen 
Mr. Tomlinson recruited in April to monitor the news broadcasts at PBS 
and NPR for objectivity, William Schulz, is a former writer for the 
radio broadcaster Fulton Lewis Jr., a notorious Joe McCarthy loyalist 
and slime artist. The Times reported that to provide "insights" into 
Conrad Burns, a Republican senator who supported public-broadcasting 
legislation that Mr. Tomlinson opposed, $10,000 was shelled out to 
Brian Darling, the G.O.P. operative who wrote the memo instructing 
Republicans to milk Terri Schiavo as "a great political issue."

Then, on Thursday, a Rove dream came true: Patricia Harrison, a former 
co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, ascended to the CPB 
presidency. In her last job, as an assistant secretary of state, Ms. 
Harrison publicly praised the department's production of faux-news 
segments - she called them "good news" segments - promoting American 
success in Afghanistan and Iraq. As The Times reported in March, one of 
those fake news videos ended up being broadcast as real news on the Fox 
affiliate in Memphis.

Mr. Tomlinson has maintained that his goal at CPB is to strengthen 
public broadcasting by restoring "balance" and stamping out "liberal 
bias." But Mr. Moyers left "Now" six months ago. Mr. Tomlinson's real, 
not-so-hidden agenda is to enforce a conservative bias or, more 
specifically, a Bush bias. To this end, he has not only turned CPB into 
a full-service employment program for apparatchiks but also helped 
initiate "The Journal Editorial Report," the only public broadcasting 
show ever devoted to a single newspaper's editorial page, that of the 
zealously pro-Bush Wall Street Journal. Unlike Mr. Moyers's "Now" - 
which routinely balanced its host's liberalism with conservative guests 
like Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Paul Gigot and Cal Thomas - The 
Journal's program does not include liberals of comparable stature.

THIS is all in keeping with Mr. Tomlinson's long career as a 
professional propagandist. During the Reagan administration he ran 
Voice of America. Then he moved on to edit Reader's Digest, where, 
according to Peter Canning's 1996 history of the magazine, "American 
Dreamers," he was rumored to be "a kind of 'Manchurian Candidate' " 
because of the ensuing spike in pro-C.I.A. spin in Digest articles. 
Today Mr. Tomlinson is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, 
the federal body that supervises all nonmilitary international United 
States propaganda outlets, Voice of America included. That the 
administration's foremost propagandist would also be chairman of the 
board of CPB, the very organization meant to shield public broadcasting 
from government interference, is astonishing. But perhaps no more so 
than a White House press secretary month after month turning for 
softball questions to "Jeff Gannon," a fake reporter for a fake news 
organization ultimately unmasked as a G.O.P. activist's propaganda 
site.

As the public broadcasting debate plays out, there will be the usual 
talk about how to wean it from federal subsidy and the usual complaints 
(which I share) about the redundancy, commerciality and declining 
quality of some PBS programming in a cable universe. But once Big Bird, 
like that White House Thanksgiving turkey, is again ritualistically 
saved from the chopping block and the Senate restores more of the 
House's budget cuts, the most crucial test of the damage will be what 
survives of public broadcasting's irreplaceable journalistic offerings.

Will monitors start harassing Jim Lehrer's "NewsHour," which Mr. 
Tomlinson trashed at a March 2004 State Department conference as a 
"tired and slowed down" also-ran to Shepard Smith's rat-a-tat-tat 
newscast at Fox News? Will "Frontline" still be taking on the tough 
investigations that network news no longer touches? Will the reportage 
on NPR be fearless or the victim of a subtle or not-so-subtle chilling 
effect instilled by Mr. Tomlinson and his powerful allies in high 
places?

Forget the pledge drive. What's most likely to save the independent 
voice of public broadcasting from these thugs is a rising chorus of 
Deep Throats.

copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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