Concluding a probe prodded by Senate Democrats, the inspector general of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Konz, released his report yesterday on whether former CPB Board Chairman Ken Tomlinson violated agency rules and procedures in his attempt to bring some (or any) balance to the routinely liberal on-air content of public broadcasting. Konz said yes. Stephen Labaton of the New York Times, who was hot in outrage on Tomlinson's conservative trail, tarts it up this morning with the headline: "Broadcast Chief Violated Laws, Inquiry Finds."
The report itself is tamer (although Tomlinson rejects it as inaccurate and political) reveals the classic split in CPB's statutory founding in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which both asks the CPB to protect pub-casting from political influence AND insure objectivity and balance in all programming of a controversial nature. What's happened instead, as Konz reports: the controversy over Tomlinson hiring contractor Fred Mann to analyze PBS and NPR content is the first time in forty years that CPB has actually evaluated an individual program for balance. (What the request for an IG report says to conservatives in Washington is: never, ever try again to balance out public broadcasting.) Tomlinson attempted to balance the Friday night lineup with "Tucker Carlson Unfiltered" and "The Journal Editorial Report." Tucker's show is already gone. The pub-casting newspaper Current says the Journal show will also end, on December 2. Bye-bye to the balance attempt...
As you can see from our reports, PBS and NPR live up to their reputations for liberal bias on a regular basis.
