PBS Whores For GOP - NeoCons plan to fill network with lies.

[StlMo]

Edited to fix e-mail address.

PBS Whores For GOP

FAIR

 Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting     112 W. 27th Street   New York, NY 10001

ACTION ALERT:

PBS Panders to Right With New Programming

September 17, 2004

A new public television program called The Journal Editorial Report, featuring writers and editors from the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, will debut tonight on public television stations around the country. The show joins Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, hosted by conservative CNN pundit Tucker Carlson, and a planned program featuring conservative commentator Michael Medved as part of what many see as politically motivated decisions to bring more right-wing voices to public television.

...

The notion that public broadcasting should find ways to balance itself is odd, and accepts at face value the right-wing critique that PBS is biased to the left. If anything, PBS (and public broadcasting in general) is theoretically designed to balance the voices that dominate the commercial media. As the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act proposed, public broadcasting should have "instructional, educational and cultural purposes" and should address "the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities."

Instead, public television has in practice largely been a home for elite viewpoints, dominated by long-running political shows hosted by conservatives (Firing Line, McLaughlin Group, One on One) and by business shows aimed at the investing class (Nightly Business Report, Adam Smith's Money World, Wall $treet Week). When this line-up wasn't enough to insulate public TV from right-wing complaints in the mid-1990s, programmers responded by creating more series for conservatives like Peggy Noonan (Peggy Noonan on Values) and Ben Wattenberg (Think Tank).

Now PBS seems once again to be trying to placate right-wing critics, in this case by bringing to public broadcasting voices already well-represented in the mainstream media. Tucker Carlson's take on world affairs, for example, is available at least five days a week on CNN; it's not clear that he would say anything different on PBS, though in a test show (L.A. Times, 6/18/04) he referred to the Democratic convention's diversity goals as "a new affirmative action plan for gays, lesbians and cross-dressers," and called Indian evangelist Dr. K.A. Paul a "spiritual advisor to the scum of the Earth." ("He's willfully non-P.C.," explained WETA programming chief Dalton Delan.)

And the Wall Street Journal editorial page, included in every edition of the nation's second-largest newspaper, is already widely available-- and widely read. Ironically, the Journal has long been hostile to the notion of publicly funded broadcasting: After it was discovered that some public TV stations were selling their donors lists to political parties, a 1999 Journal editorial advised: "In a better world all this would lead Congress to do what it should have done a long time ago: cut off the public tap, freeing Barney, Big Bird and the other wonderful PBS creations to find a profitable niche on cable without having to shill for public television's other, more politicized, offerings."

...

Given that PBS is responding to conservative complaints by adding more conservative shows, and is not responding in any substantive way to progressive complaints, one can only conclude that if the network had been "getting it mostly right," it'll now just be getting mostly right-wing.

...

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ACTION: Please ask PBS's Pat Mitchell what new shows are planned to balance the new conservative-oriented public TV shows.

CONTACT:

PBS

Pat Mitchell, President and CEO

mailto:[e-mail]

Phone: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

Or use the PBS comment form:

http://www.pbs.org/aboutsite/aboutsite_emailform.html

You might also want to contact your local PBS affiliate about PBS's rightward lurch:

http://www.pbs.org/stationfinder/index.html


...

http://www.fair.org/activism/pbs-goes-right.html

[Shoeempress]

1. Yes , Gigot the bigot will join PBS. Send them a letter explaining why

you are no longer able to send any money due to thier unbalanced and extremist shows. I did it when Carlson was put on.

[agingdem]

2. So..

the next time they do one of their "we need money "athons, you and your friends should call and tell whomever answers the phone that you will no longer donate because of PBS bias.

[wildflower]

3. Anyone see the McLaughlin report tonight? Tonight was the first time

I've ever seen it, believe it or not. I was sitting there going "What the...?"

They were putting down Edwards and asking which dog would he and Cheney most represent. And I couldn't understand why they were all shouting at the top of their lungs.

Other than that, most of the guests seemed to be fairly okay, except for the guy from the Washington Times, predictably.

-widflower

[misterphelps]

4. Turn off the spigot for PBS

If this is the way it's going to go.... and believe me, it's going this way, then I agree with our conservative counterparts that PBS should lose it's public funding.

We call it " houding the ref" at basketball games. The right has been doing it for years and finally reaping the rewards. Constantly objecting to the views expressed on the network.

The only language they hear is $$$. If they got the same pressure from liberal legislators, maybe they'd snap out of their rightward leaning hypnosis.

[StlMo]

5. Yes. Money does talk.

nt