One of the reasons I have long inveighed against “public” TV is its tendency to avoid authentic conservative opinion. For almost 20 years now, Exhibit A has been PBS News Hour pundit David Brooks. PBS picked up Brooks as its supposedly right-leaning Friday night opinionator in 2004, shortly after he became a New York Times columnist in 2003.
The Atlantic is pushing an article on Facebook that Brooks wrote for them, titled “Confessions of a Republican Exile.” The subhead summarized: “A longtime conservative, alienated by Trumpism, tries to come to terms with life on the moderate edge of the Democratic Party.”
One would think this was new, but it’s from last October. Brooks wrote: “So these days I find myself rooting for the Democrats about 70 percent of the time. I’ve taken up residence on what I like to call the rightward edge of the leftward tendency, and I think of myself as a moderate or conservative Democrat.”
This is what PBS would like us to believe is a serious difference of opinion: someone who roots for the Democrats 70 percent of the time vs. someone who roots for the Democrats 100 percent of the time (his pundit partner Jonathan Capehart). It’s a “moderate or conservative Democrat” vs. a leftist DEI-touting MSNBC weekend host.
Brooks shouldn’t be tagged as a “longtime conservative.” He was trashing George W. Bush in his campaign against Brooks hero John McCain in 2000. In his Atlantic piece, Brooks claimed “over time I’ve become gradually more repulsed by the GOP—first by Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, then by the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus, and now, of course, by Donald Trump.”
He’s been adrift from the conservative movement for about 30 years now. Brooks sided more with the liberal media than the conservatives in 2000: "The movement consciousness is based on the idea that we are a band of brave, beleaguered souls under perpetual assault from the liberal mainstream media. These people detest McCain because liberals don't hate him."
Within this Atlantic article, Brooks contradicts himself. He indicts the insularity of the progressive elites: “If you go to the right private school, the right elite college, and live in the right urban neighborhood, you might never encounter anyone who challenges your worldview. To assure that this insularity is complete, progressives have done a very good job of purging Republicans from the sectors they dominate, like the media and the academy.”
That’s correct. PBS purged itself of Republicans (his predecessor Paul Gigot) and hired David Brooks instead.
Later on, though, he claims “Blue World” is more amenable to debate. “But today the Republican relationship to truth and knowledge has gone to hell. MAGA is a fever swamp of lies, conspiracy theories, and scorn for expertise. The Blue World, in contrast, is a place more amenable to disagreement, debate, and the energetic pursuit of truth.”
That’s not true at all if you consider how Capehart sputters and scribbles on the PBS set on those rare occasions when Brooks disagrees with him on something.
Brooks concluded: “Blue World is where the better angels of our nature seem lately to have migrated, and where the best hope for the future of the country now lies.”
"Blue World" and taxpayer-funded PBS are synonymous. Since its launch in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, PBS has proven itself incapable of allowing conservatives an equal share in its political programming. They routinely ignore the Act's demand for “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.”
