Republican Chairman
Exerts Pressure
on PBS, Alleging
Biases
By STEPHEN LABATON,
LORNE MANLY and ELIZABETH JENSEN, NYTimes on the Web, May 2, 2005
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.
Mr. Tomlinson also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to
broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of
the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And while a
search firm has been retained to find a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the
corporation's president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last
month, Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia
Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now
an assistant secretary of state.
Mr. Tomlinson said that he was striving for balance and had no desire to impose
a political point of view on programming, explaining that his efforts are
intended to help public broadcasting distinguish itself in a 500-channel
universe and gain financial and political support.
"My goal here is to see programming that satisfies a broad constituency," he
said, adding, "I'm not after removing shows or tampering internally with shows."
But he has repeatedly criticized public television programs as too liberal
overall, and said in the interview, "I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is
a tone deafness to issues of tone and balance."
Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive of PBS, who has sparred with Mr.
Tomlinson privately but till now has not challenged him publicly, disputed the
accusation of bias and was critical of some of his actions.
"I believe there has been no chilling effect, but I do think there have been
instances of attempts to influence content from a political perspective that I
do not consider appropriate," Ms. Mitchell, who plans to step down when her
contract expires next year, said Friday.
Robert Coonrod, who stepped down as corporation president in July 2004, has
known Mr. Tomlinson about 20 years and considers him a good friend. "I
believe that his motives are exactly what he says they are," he said. Mr.
Tomlinson is "trying to help the people in public broadcasting understand why
some people in the conservative movement think PBS is hostile to them and, two,
imbue public broadcasting with the notion of balance because he thinks that long
term it's a winner in getting Congressional support."
"Whether people like the way he goes about it or not is a different issue," Mr.
Coonrod added.
Though PBS's ratings have stabilized lately after several years of decline, the
network has faced criticism that much of its programming -- shows like "Antiques
Roadshow" and "Masterpiece Theater" -- is little different from what can be
found on cable television. Though a huge bequest to National Public Radio
from the estate of Joan Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonald's, has furthered
the independence of public radio, corporate support and state financing for
public television have slipped in recent years, making the nearly $400 million
in federal money annually funneled through the corporation increasingly
important.
Nor have administration officials and lawmakers been shy about challenging
certain programming. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, for example,
earlier this year publicly denounced a program featuring a cartoon rabbit named
Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.
The corporation is a private, nonprofit entity financed by Congress to ensure
the vitality of public television and radio. Tension is hardwired into its
charter, where its mandate to ensure "objectivity and balance" is accompanied by
an exhortation to maintain public broadcasting's independence. Mr.
Tomlinson said that in his view, objectivity and balance meant "a program
schedule that's not skewed in one direction or another." Some corporation
board members say that complaints about ideological pressure are premature.
Beth Courtney, president and chief executive of Louisiana Public Broadcasting
and one of three non-Republicans on the nine-member board, said there had been
no chilling of journalistic efforts. "What we should look for are the real
actions," she said. "We shouldn't speculate about people's motivations."
But Mr. Tomlinson's tenure has brought criticism that his chairmanship has been
the most polarizing in a generation. Christy Carpenter, a Democratic
appointee to the board from 1998 to 2002, said partisanship was "essentially
nonexistent" in her first years. But once Mr. Tomlinson, a former editor
in chief of Reader's Digest, joined in September 2000 and President Bush's
election changed the board's political composition, the tenor changed, she said.
"There was an increasingly and disturbingly aggressive desire to be more
involved and to push programming in a more conservative direction," said Ms.
Carpenter, who is now a vice president of the Museum of Television and Radio.
One of the more disturbing developments, she added, was a "very vehement dislike
for Bill Moyers."
It is not a shock that Mr. Moyers's work exercised Mr. Tomlinson. He is a
reliable source of agitation for conservatives, who complain that "Now" under
Mr. Moyers (who left the show last year and was replaced by David Brancaccio)
was consistently critical of Republicans and the Bush administration. Days
after the Republicans gained control of the Senate in the 2002 elections, Mr.
Moyers -- an aide in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and a former newspaper
publisher who has been associated with PBS since the 1970's -- said the entire
federal government was "united behind a right-wing agenda" that included "the
power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own
lives."
In December 2003, three months after he was elected chairman, Mr. Tomlinson sent
Ms. Mitchell of PBS a letter outlining his concerns. " 'Now With Bill
Moyers' does not contain anything approaching the balance the law requires for
public broadcasting," he wrote.
Shortly after, Mr. Tomlinson hired a consultant to review Mr. Moyers's program;
one three-month contract cost $10,000. The reports Mr. Tomlinson saw
placed the program's guests in categories like "anti-Bush," "anti-business" and
"anti-Tom DeLay," referring to the House majority leader, corporation officials
said. The reports found the guests were overwhelmingly anti-Bush, a
conclusion Mr. Moyers disputed.
Mr. Moyers said on Friday that he did not know a content review was undertaken
but that he was not surprised. "Tomlinson has waged a surreptitious and
relentless campaign against 'Now' and me," he said, dismissing complaints that
he is biased. Mr. Moyers left "Now" to write a book but is back on public
television as host of the series "Wide Angle."
Mr. Tomlinson said he conducted the content review on his own, without sending
the results to the board or making them public, because he wanted to better
understand complaints he was hearing without provoking a storm. "If I
wanted to be more destructive to public broadcasting but score political points,
I would have come out with this study a year and a half ago," he said.
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.
The corporation said it had no such plans, and the contract was finally signed
about a month ago.
Mr. Tomlinson did help get one program, "The Journal Editorial Report," on the
air as a way of balancing "Now." Ms. Mitchell backed the program, but
public broadcasting officials said Mr. Tomlinson was instrumental in lining up
$5 million in corporate financing and pressing PBS to distribute it.
Public television executives noted that Mr. Gigot's show by design features the
members of the conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, while
Mr. Moyers's guests included many conservatives, like Ralph Reed, former head of
the Christian Coalition; Richard Viguerie, a conservative political strategist;
and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Mr. Tomlinson said that it was his concerns about "objectivity and balance" that
led to the creation of a new office of the ombudsman at the corporation to issue
reports about public television and radio broadcasts. But the role of a
White House official in setting up the office has raised questions among some
public broadcasting executives about its independence. In March, after she
had been hired by the corporation but was still at the White House as director
of the Office of Global Communications, Mary Catherine Andrews helped draft the
office's guiding principles, set up a Web page and prepare a news release about
the appointment of the new ombudsmen, officials said.
Ms. Andrews said she undertook the work at the instruction of top officials at
the corporation. "I was careful not to work on this project during office
hours during my last days at the White House," she said.
Mr. Tomlinson has also occasionally worked with other White House officials on
public broadcasting issues. Last year he enlisted the presidential adviser
Karl Rove 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.
Mr. Tomlinson said he understood the need to reassure liberals that the
traditions of public broadcasting, including public affairs programs, were not
changing, "that we're not trying to put a wet blanket on this type of
programming."
But his efforts to sow goodwill have shown that what he says he tries to project
is sometimes read in a different way. Last November, members of the
Association of Public Television Stations met in Baltimore along with officials
from the corporation and PBS. Mr. Tomlinson told them they should make
sure their programming better reflected the Republican mandate.
Mr. Tomlinson said that his comment was in jest and that he couldn't imagine how
remarks at "a fun occasion" were taken the wrong way. Others, though, were
not amused.
"I was in that room," said Ms. Mitchell. "I was surprised by the comment.
I thought it was inappropriate."
Stephen Labaton reported from Washington for this article,
Lorne Manly from New York and Elizabeth Jensen from Columbus, Ohio.
|
