The New York Times is on a roll. Two weeks in a row, they've delivered some dynamite information about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting "CPB", which is supposed to fund and promote public TV and public radio. Last week, the Times magazine had a
stunning interview with new CPB interim head, Ken Ferree. Ferree, who used to work for FCC Chairman Michael Powell, confessed that he really did not watch much public TV, except for the occasional Masterpiece Theater of Antiques Road Show. He preferred the pace of People Magazine to The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. And he did not listen to NPR because he commuted to work on his motorcycle:
Yes, Lehrer is good, but I don't watch a lot of broadcast news. The problem for me is that I do the Internet news stuff all day long, so by the time I get to the Lehrer thing . . . it's slow. I don't always want to sit down and read Shakespeare, and Lehrer is akin to Shakespeare. Sometimes I really just want a People magazine, and often that is in the evening, after a hard day.
[...]
No. I do not get a lot of public radio for one simple reason. I commute to work on my motorcycle, and there is no radio access.
Not exactly what you want to hear from the man who should be public broadcasting's most important advocate.
Today,
the Times put its focus on CPB chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. Its story raises a lot of questions about Tomlinson's commitment to the fact-based investigative and substantive journalism that most of us want and new from PBS and NPR:
WASHINGTON, May 1 - The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.
Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."
In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts.
Washington may be the nation's capital, but it many ways, it's a small town. So it's easy to run into people who have worked for public broadcasting who are truly worried about what's happening there. They speak of an environment that is intimidating to good work and fearless journalism.
We at Common Cause are working on a number of initiatives that we hope will improve public broadcasting. Stayed tuned.
