by Patrick Lang
(Longtime PBS Newshour analyst; full bio below)
“Tomlinson, a Republican, quit shortly before CPB Inspector General Kenneth Konz was to publish a report after investigating his activities, including paying outside researchers to check public programing for liberal bias.
Critics, including broadcasters and congressional Democrats, accused Tomlinson of trying to advance his own conservative agenda in public broadcasting, which is supposed to be non-partisan.” Reuters
“Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester, a critic of Tomlinson, said his departure was unlikely to stop what he described as behind-the-scenes programing pressure on PBS and NPR.
“Board chair Halpern and vice chair Gaines will continue Tomlinson’s legacy to reshape public broadcasting more to the liking of conservatives,” Chester said in a statement.
Veteran Republican Party fund-raisers Cheryl Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines were elected in September as CPB board chairman and vice chair, respectively.” Reuters
There is a certain air of “1984” about all that is presently going on in the US with regard to media. “Big Brother” lurks in unseen but effective ways in the corporate offices that control what we are allowed to see. It has been pathetically obvious for some time that the commercial media (with notable exceptions) are being run for the benefit of the faction currently in political power in this country. This CPB resignation highlights the fact that the same forces are “muffling” the PBS/NPR outlets as well.
Those who claim to be conservative like to talk about “liberal bias” in the mainstream American media. This is mainly “hokum.” … Keep reading:
In the bygone days which liberals seem to think of as a “Golden Age” there were media like CBS News and the New York Times which were quite self-indulgent in expressing the liberal inclinations of their editors and reporters. This had some effect but was largely ignored by people who did not share the opinions of these institutions.
That was then. This is now. Now we have systematic exploitation of the lack of conscience which lies at the heart of much of corporate thinking. A ruthless use of the power of the federal government to both intimidate and seduce the corporations who own much of the media has marked the last few years.
This article makes it clear that the public media are also stained by this kind of spinelessness.
There are some signs of restlessness among the media moguls. I presume that they are afraid of “missing the boat” if things “go south” for the Bush Administration. In business you always have to have an eye for the “main chance” and not stick with a losing project too long. Sunk costs are sunk costs.
Lewis Libby is now experiencing the kind of isolation and shunning that characterize a social system ruled by fear. The experience may spread.
Pat Lang
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Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”.
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib <a href="Posts
Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)
“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
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blksista’s diary also celebrates Tomlinson’s problems at CPB.
The bigger problem is if PBS/NPR execs and producers will continue to feel the hot breath of the extreme conservatives on their necks.
But dangerous. I know many people who have swallowed the liberal media lie so thoroughly that they wouldn’t believe their own eyes if a reporter saw the same thing and mentioned it on TV or in the NYTimes.
SEND A LETTER via Free Press asking for “sweeping reforms” at CPB.
Another insidious job done by conservatives in portraying the media news as liberal and of course completely untrue. I think a lot of people who state that the media is liberal confuse movies/tv etc with the news..as least that’s my experience. If you start talking about the media not being liberal the first thing I’m told is well just look at the kind of crap hollywood makes into movies and the kind of tv shows are on…which doesn’t have anything to do of course in what the so called news reports on. Not that these same people don’t believe that the news is biased towards liberals also but they lump this all together.
As for having a free press a new report just came out and we continue to go downhill in having a free press every year it seems with bush in office and we are now rated at 44-44 other countries are rated as having a freer press than us-what was that again about spreading freedom and democracy?
chocolate, do you have a link or source for the 44 report? I seem to have missed it.
http://tinyurl.com/bdjty Report I was referring to…I remember when I first learned quite a few years ago that we weren’t number one in freedom of the press I was so depressed and appalled-not that I thought our press was that free but to think we’ve continued to go downhill especially with bush taking office is disheartening and scary. And very few people in the general public have any idea of this nor would they even believe it anyway.
It reminds me of when argentina went t war with Britain. Everybody believed that we were wining until they capitulated. But when they finally realized how they were lied, it did hit the fan. They did take it against the security forces, and it was not just a few.
When the American people realize how they were lied to, they will take it with the republicans.
And in both cases, the media had an essential role in decieving the people.
This:
is a standard article of faith from the right, but has precious little evidence to support it, for a variety of reasons, but two are particularly significant:
(1) “Liberal inclinations” are to examine both (or multiple) sides of any question. Indeed, liberals often go out of their way to include views that they disagree with–as when the ACLU defends the right of Nazis to march or demonstrate. The NYT, in particular, hired William Safire for its editorial pages, whisking him away from the sinking ship of the Nixon Administration. For the next 10 years or so, every time a Democrat sneezed, Safire compared it to Watergate.
(2) The NYT and CBS were always businesses, and their actions always reflected this. Well into the early 60s this mitigated against consistent (as opposed to episodic) realistic coverage of the civil rights movement. Neither was reliably honest or realistic about Vietnam, either. The Wall Street Journal, OTOH came out against the war in 1967.