Public Broadcasting
Gets a Budgetary Lift
By STEPHEN LABATON,
NYTimes on the Web, July 12, 2005
WASHINGTON, July 11 - A senior
Republican and a senior Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee endorsed
overturning proposed cuts to the budget of public broadcasting on Monday, while
the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting defended himself against
accusations by Democrats that he has injected politics into programming.
"I have brought the issue of political balance -- common-sense political balance
-- to the debate," said Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the corporation's chairman, in his
first appearance before Congress since recent disclosures that he was under
investigation by the corporation's inspector general for a series of decisions
and payments to consultants that he has said were necessary to ensure balance in
programming.
Others have criticized Mr. Tomlinson's decisions as interference with
programming, and three weeks ago, 16 Democrats in the Senate called on President
Bush to remove him.
The decisions under review include the hiring of a former official of a
conservative journalism training organization to monitor several programs,
notably "Now" with Bill Moyers; payments of $15,000 to two Republican lobbyists
last year to help defeat a proposal to have more broadcasters on the
corporation's board; and the use of a White House official to help create a new
office of ombudsman at the corporation to monitor balance in programs.
Appearing before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Mr. Tomlinson defended
his decision to order the corporation to pay more than $14,000 to retain Fred
Mann, a former official at the National Journalism Center, which was founded by
the American Conservative Union, to monitor the Moyers program, along with
programs featuring David Brancaccio (Mr. Moyers's successor on "Now"), Diane
Rehm, Tavis Smiley and Tucker Carlson.
He said some of the programs were monitored to demonstrate that, in contrast to
Mr. Moyers's program, they were more balanced.
In the name of political balance, Mr. Tomlinson also rebuffed questions from
Democratic members about his prodding of the corporation to provide $4 million
to produce a weekly program that is broadcast on most public stations on Fridays
and features members of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street
Journal.
"Law requires a diversity of opinions, and on Friday evenings, public
broadcasting would do well to reflect conservative points of view as it did so
eloquently liberal points of view," he said in the written portion of his
testimony. "There is an important audience for the liberal advocacy
journalism that is Bill Moyers. The law, however, requires CPB to
encourage balance when such programming is presented."
Mr. Tomlinson said that the debate over balance was harming broadcasting by
jeopardizing public support. But on Monday the corporation and its
supporters who seek to restore spending cuts imposed by the House received a
strong endorsement from two of the most senior members of the Senate.
Last month, the House of Representatives voted to restore some cuts to the
public broadcasting system's budget when it approved a measure to keep the
corporation's budget at $400 million. But it also cut the $23 million
"Ready to Learn" program, which contributes to some children's shows on public
television, and also rejected proposals to provide an additional $50 million for
upgrading public broadcasting's aging satellite technology and $39 million for
converting to digital television.
Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who once headed the Appropriations
Committee and continues to play a major role in spending issues, proposed
restoring those cuts because, he said, the money was essential to the
preservation of the system, particularly in states like Alaska that have greater
difficulty raising private money for public broadcasting. Defending Mr.
Tomlinson, Mr. Stevens also said that some programs occasionally were biased and
that the corporation ought to take steps to ensure balance, but that those
issues were beside the point.
"I deplore the problem that there are some who want to exploit the system for
their own political views," he said. "Public broadcasting should take what
has happened as a wake-up call."
A senior Democratic member of the committee, Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii,
also endorsed restoring the cuts.
If, as expected, the Senate restores the cuts, then House and Senate lawmakers
would have to reconcile their competing measures in a conference committee.
Mr. Inouye and a Democratic colleague, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois,
pointedly questioned Mr. Tomlinson about spending tax money to monitor the
Moyers program and Mr. Tomlinson's promotion of "The Journal Editorial Report,"
whose host, Paul Gigot, is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal.
"Are you going to provide $5 million for The Nation magazine?" Mr. Durbin asked.
Mr. Tomlinson replied that Friday evenings were already adequately balanced.
"If we had liberal advocacy on Friday for an hour, we should have conservative
advocacy for an hour," he said. "There is no one I know who does not
regard Bill Moyers as liberal advocacy."
Mr. Stevens then came to Mr. Tomlinson's defense.
"I think Bill Moyers is biased, and I respect him for it," Mr. Stevens said.
"I applaud you for recognizing that and for counterbalancing it."
Mr. Tomlinson was also criticized by the subcommittee's chairman, Senator Arlen
Specter of Pennsylvania, who said it was inappropriate for the corporation to
have used taxpayer money to hire two Republican lobbyists last year.
"Why pay $10,000 to get insights into a senator?" Mr. Specter asked. "Why
not pick up the phone and simply call the senator? When we see these
reports and you confirm it, it raises questions about the propriety of the
expenditure."
The hearing also featured the debut of Patricia Harrison as the corporation's
president. The choice of Ms. Harrison, a former co-chairwoman at the
Republican National Committee and former official in the State Department with
no significant experience in broadcasting, had been strongly opposed by public
broadcasting executives. Five days into the job, Ms. Harrison said that
she was "committed to protecting the nonpartisan nature of public broadcasting"
and was a faithful supporter of its mission, in particular its role in
educational television.
"I think about my last day on the job -- I have a strong enough ego that I want
to say that, when I leave, the institution is stronger," she said. "I feel
confident that I'm a fair person. I have a great deal of integrity.
Plus I come from Brooklyn, New York, and I'm an Italian-American."
|
