Does anyone remember when public broadcasting featured “balanced” programs like Bill Moyers? When both libertarian and conservative critics routinely demanded an end to government funding of public broadcasting? (Well, some still do.)
Unless the WaPo is wrong, it appears that this balance may be shifting in the other direction:
Liberal commentator Bill Moyers is out on PBS stations. Buster the animated rabbit is under a cloud of suspicion. And right-wing yakkers from the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been handed their own public-television chat show.
Some observers, including people inside the Public Broadcasting Service, see these recent developments as troubling. PBS, they say, is being forced to toe a more conservative line in its programming by the Republican-dominated agency that provides about $30 million in federal funds to the Alexandria-based service.
Officials at the agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, say they are merely seeking to ensure balance and fairness in the network’s presentation of political news and ideas.
Under its mandate from Congress, which created the agency in 1967, CPB is required to act as an independent buffer between lawmakers and public broadcasters, although it can set broad programming goals. Appointees of President Bush currently control the majority of seats on CPB’s eight-member board. Each board member serves a six-year term.
How did such a thing happen? How on earth did President Bush get to appoint members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?
While it might have something to do with his election, others are calling this a right wing coup.
A senior FCC official, who would not speak for attribution because he must rule on issues affecting public broadcasting, went further, saying CPB “is engaged in a systematic effort not just to sanitize the truth, but to impose a right-wing agenda on PBS. It’s almost like a right-wing coup. It appears to be orchestrated.”
I expect that the next thing we’ll be hearing is a big hue and cry to take away government funding of PBS — coming from the left!