By arthur Weinreb
Friday, May 20, 2005Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican who chairs. Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in the U.S. that controls both the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) caused quite a stir when he hired a consultant to monitor the television network for balance. Tomlinson, not unlike many others, feels that the public broadcaster has tilted too far to the left.
The New York Times reported that the consultant is monitoring Now with Bill Moyers (that is now without Bill Moyers) and counting how many of the show’s guests are anti-Bush, anti-business and anti-Tom Delay.
any action to provide better balance by solely monitoring the public broadcaster did not, surprise surprise, go unchallenged. Two Democratic Party Members of Congress accused Tomlinson of violating the Public Broadcasting act of 1967. That act prohibits federal officials from interfering in any manner with public broadcasting. The Inspector General of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has begun an internal review of the accusations.
It is also not surprising that the usual suspects surfaced to make allegations that Tomlinson was doing the bidding of the White House by calling for more balance. The Los angeles Times referred to Tomlinson as a "Republican hack" and accused him of "slowly strangling National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System." Bill Moyers came out swinging, accusing the chair of the CPB of hijacking public broadcasting "to serve a partisan agenda". This is so typical of the left. When they spout their liberal rhetoric, it’s not partisan — it’s the truth. But when conservatives do the same thing, it’s because they have an agenda. Moyers lays the blame for the monitoring on of course George W. Bush who is responsible for everything bad that happens in the United States from terrorist attacks to teenage acne.
at least by doing what he did, Tomlinson, if nothing else, brought more attention to the issue of bias in public broadcasting. It’s hard to imagine any public official or member of the government (even in a Conservative government) doing anything about the bias in our public broadcaster. This could never happen in a place where the CBC views themselves as one with the Liberal government and both see themselves as the only legitimate voice for Canada.