The Radical Right Wing is Taking Over PBS and NPR

- Exclusively used only far right wing "news" organizations, such as Fox (love this part) News and those Sun Myung Moon worshippers over at Washington Times, to defend his actions. For a more moderate defense, he went over to Tucker "Dick" Carlson's "Unfiltered" on the homeland of PBS.

- "...considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday." (New York Times)

- "…has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations." (New York Times)

"Last year he enlisted the presidential adviser Karl Rove (his good friend) to help kill a legislative proposal that would change the composition of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board by requiring the president to fill about half the seats with people who had experience in local radio and television. The proposal was dropped after Mr. Rove and the White House criticized it." However, on the O'Reilly Factor, good old Bill lobbed up a very suspicious question, grammatically parsed in a way that would have made another Bill blush. O’Reilly asked Ken T., "Now, you said that you have never had any conversations with any Bush administration officials about PBS? Is that true?"

Tomlinson replied, "That's true."

Obviously, O’Reilly’s “Fair and Balanced” approach allows him to bend the language in such a ridiculously shady way, as to leave out any mention of the CPB. Austinist wonders who told him to phrase it that way? (New York Times on commondreams.org)

- Hired 2 ombudsmen, not for NPR or PBS, but for the CPB, even though the CPB produces none of the aired broadcasts on either organization. The point of having a media ombudsman is to have a neutral party to view the perceived problem, and the CPB doesn't have direct control over the reporting of either NPR or PBS. Could this move have been put into effect for the nefarious purpose of moving direct control of these non-partisan organizations to the CPB, and then use the more favorable of the two ombudsmen's opinions to justify any censorship action or line-up changes? This action was enacted by Mary Catherine Andrews, the director of the White House's Office of Global Communications, while still working for Karl Rove! (Mediamatters.org)

- "Recently, PBS refused for months to sign its latest contract with the corporation governing federal financing of national programming, holding up the release of $26.5 million. For the first time, the corporation argued that PBS's agreeing to abide by its own journalistic standards was not sufficient, but that it must adhere to the "objectivity and balance" language in the charter. In a January letter to the leaders of the three biggest producing stations, in New York, Boston and Washington, the deputy general counsel of PBS warned that this could give the corporation editorial control, infringing on its First Amendment rights and possibly leading to a demand for balance in each and every show." (New York Times on commondreams.org)

CPB's board declined to renew the contract of its chief executive, Kathleen Cox, appointing instead Ken Ferree a top adviser to former FCC chairman Michael Powell. This appointment “followed the dismissals or departures in recent months of at least three other senior CPB officials, all of whom had Democratic affiliations.” (Washinton Post)

What more is there to say but this: Kenneth, you may be right, certain interests, such as the corporate and the radical right wing, may not have been best served by PBS's long-standing neutrality. But your systematic actions illuminate the fact that their political interests are certainly being taken care of. Congratulations on working to destroy 40 years of tradition, because the only people trying to politicize the public airwaves are you and your crew.