Before Congress and on television, PBS CEO Paula Kerger has repeatedly pretended she has seen no evidence of liberal bias on PBS, which is like saying you were not being able to find the sun outside. But last week, Variety's Todd Spangler wrote a long leftist editorial on "Trump's War on Truth," and Kerger spoke more like someone who knew they were at war with Trump.
One of the only media executives to agree to speak on the record is Paula Kerger, CEO of PBS. The Trump administration’s pressure to defund public media, she says, “clearly is an attempt to try to impact and control the kind of programming we do. It pulls on a thread that could unravel our entire system.”
And what is "the kind of programming we do"? Everything has a slant -- for example, we found that on the PBS News Hour, labeling of "far right" and "far left" terms had a 42-to-1 disparity (127 to 3). At PBS, Trump is an "extortionist" and the Democrats are pressured to be more "tactically ruthless" like the Republicans.
At the same time, Kerger claims that, at PBS at least, there has not been a chilling effect from Trump’s attempts to cut funding. “I look around at my colleagues who are feeling more focused than ever in making sure we do the kind of work we’re doing,” she says. News represents 10% of PBS’ programming lineup.
“Some people,” she says, referring to political conservatives, “would just as soon we didn’t do news at all.” Kerger adds, “But unflinching news coverage is part of the mission. Once you start to make concessions, you’re on a slippery slope.”
Oh really? Were the PBS folks "unflinching" in covering President Biden's mental decline? Clay Waters found some serious flinching after Biden's disastrous debate performance a year ago. They flinched in covering Hezbollah terrorists, who had "father figures."
Conservatives can't be dismissed as thinking PBS shouldn't do news, when we have demanded PBS news have some fairness and balance in it. Liberals think those things are "flinching," a "slippery slope" of "concessions."
Kerger called the prospect of defunding "massively disruptive and potentially existential.” A 15 percent cut should not be "existential," but that's the panicked tone they want to use.
