[pjnews] Public Broadcasting's Enemy Within
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. The New York Times 11/28/05 EDITORIAL Public Broadcasting's Enemy Within As chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson proved to be a disastrous zealot. Internal investigators found he repeatedly broke federal law and ethics rules in overreaching his authority and packing the payroll with Republican ideologues. His actual job - to maintain a heat shield between public broadcasting and politics - was turned on its head. The scathing investigation concluded that Mr. Tomlinson was a beacon of partisanship, hiring G.O.P. consultants as ludicrous bias-control monitors and recruiting Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, to be the corporation's new president. Mr. Tomlinson, who has now left the corporation, insisted he had absolutely no contact with White House partisans. But the inspector general's report found he did indeed consult with administration powers like Karl Rove, President Bush's political guru. He even hired someone still on the White House payroll for advice on creating a balance ombudsman for public broadcasting. And he was found to violate the law by promoting a $4 million deal for conservative writers from The Wall Street Journal to be featured as a balancing program. Mr. Tomlinson, a Reader's Digest editor appointed to the board by President Bill Clinton, threatened the independence at the heart of public broadcasting's popularity. His departure is no cure-all, however, for the board remains a haven for such political appointees as Cheryl Halpern, a Republican fund-raiser chosen by Mr. Tomlinson as the new corporation chairwoman. The inspector general's report is a case study of how dangerous ideological cronyism is as a substitute for nonpartisan expertise. Defenders of public broadcasting now must guard against still another conservative putsch - a Congressional move to cut financing for the corporation's $400 million budget of vital aid for local stations. This time, the balance zealots may resort to irony by citing the very chaos wrought by Mr. Tomlinson. --- Moyers Has His Say: Former Now host on media bias and his feud with former CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson By John Eggerton Broadcasting Cable Bill Moyers became the central figure in absentia in the controversy surrounding former Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. It was Tomlinson who pointed to Moyers' Now newscast on PBS as a chief reason for his efforts to bring balance to public broadcasting by adding conservative shows. Moyers has since left Now and is currently president of the Schumann Center for Media Democracy. He spoke with BC's John Eggerton in the wake of a CPB Inspector General report concluding Tomlinson had violated the law by dealing directly with a programmer during the creation of a show to balance Moyers' program. You are the exemplar of liberal PBS bias, according to Ken Tomlinson. Was your show liberally biased? Right-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive reporting as liberal. We were biased, all rightin favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq. We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories, and the administration turned its hit men loose on us. Tomlinson actually told The Washington Post that he was irate over one of our documentary reports from a small town in Pennsylvania hard-hit by outsourcing. If reporting on what's happening to ordinary people thrown overboard by circumstances beyond their control and betrayed by Washington officials is liberalism, I stand convicted. It is an old canard of right-wing ideologues like Tomlinson to equate tough journalism with liberalism. They hope to distract people from the message by trying to discredit the messenger. Now threw the fear of God into Tomlinson's crowd because they couldn't dispute the accuracy of our reporting. And when we weren't reporting the truth behind the news, we were interviewing a wide variety of people: Ralph Reed and Ralph Nader; Cal Thomas and Molly Ivins; Robert Bartley, editor of the Wall Street Journal; Katrina Vandenheuval, editor of The Nation; The Conservative Union's David Keene; Dorothy Rabinowitz (also of the Wall Street Journal); Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity; the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore; historian Howard Zinn; and Indian activist Arundhati Roy. And on and on. Did you get any direct pressure from Tomlinson or CPB to change the content of your show? The people at PBS told me
[pjnews] Bush resigns
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. BUSH RESIGNS By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman George Bush today resigned his presidency. Three months ago, Bush was slapped with a one-count indictment by the Iraq War Crimes Tribunal charging him with crimes against humanity. Standing before Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Bush read the following statement: Today, I am resigning as President of the United States because I have compromised the trust of my constituents. Several months ago, I publicly declared my innocence because I was not strong enough to face the truth. So, I misled my family, staff, friends, colleagues, the public -- even myself. For all of this, I am deeply sorry. The truth is -- I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my high office. I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, and most importantly, the trust of my friends and family. Some time ago, I asked my lawyers to inform the special war crimes prosecutor that I would like to plead guilty and begin serving a prison term. Today is the culmination of that process. I will continue to cooperate with the government's ongoing investigation to the best of my ability. In my life, I have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame. Okay, so that wasn't George Bush. Change a few words, and that is the verbatim statement of Congressman Randall Duke Cunningham, who pled guilty in San Diego today to taking more than $2.4 million in bribes from a number of defense contractors. He faces 10 years in prison. Here's the rest of Cunningham's statement: I learned in Viet Nam that the true measure of a man is how he responds to adversity. I cannot undo what I have done. But I can atone. I am now almost 65 years old and, as I enter the twilight of my life, I intend to use the remaining time that God grants me to make amends. The first step in that journey is to admit fault and apologize. The next step is to face the consequences of my actions like a man. Today, I have taken the first step and, with God's grace, I will soon take the second. Of course, George Bush did not learn anything in Vietnam. Because he skipped out on Vietnam. Not out of principle, but simply from the exercise of class privilege. But as former Congressman Cunningham said today, the true measure of a man is how he responds to adversity. And George Bush is facing adverse times. Why wait for the indictment? Do what white-collar criminals do. Go to the prosecutor and come clean. Admit to the war crimes you have committed. What you have done is a violation of international law. Indeed, as former chief justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson put it -- a war of aggression is the supreme international crime. And you have committed it. The first step of your journey is to admit fault and apologize -- to the American people, to the Iraqi people and to the people of the world. The second step is to face the consequences of your actions like a man. You have known great joy and sorrow in your life. Now is your time to know shame. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman This article is posted at: http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2005/000222.html ___ Focus on the Corporation is a weekly column written by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman. Please feel free to forward the column to friends or repost the column on other lists. If you would like to post the column on a web site or publish it in print format, we ask that you first contact us ([EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]). _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject subscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will become disabled or deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for
