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News :: Media |
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Right Wing Moving in on Sesame Street |
Current rating: 0 |
by Victor Pickard
Email: vpickard (nospam) uiuc.edu (unverified!) |
04 Oct 2005
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Right-wing ideologues are silently taking over our public media.
Just when we thought Big Bird was safe, trouble has returned to Sesame Street. In fact, trouble never left. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the agency that oversees PBS and NPR, is the latest in a long line of institutions to suffer hostile takeovers by right-wing ideologues. Though Republicans’ attempt to de-fund the CPB in June backfired after setting off a public firestorm, the assault from within has run unabated, led by right-wing apparatchik and CPB chair, Kenneth Tomlinson. |
From the Public i, published by the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center. Oct. 2005.
Just when we thought Big Bird was safe, trouble has returned to Sesame Street. In fact, trouble never left. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the agency that oversees PBS and NPR, is the latest in a long line of institutions to suffer hostile takeovers by right-wing ideologues. Though Republicans’ attempt to de-fund the CPB in June backfired after setting off a public firestorm, the assault from within has run unabated, led by right-wing apparatchik and CPB chair, Kenneth Tomlinson.
During his tenure as the head of CPB, Tomlinson has parlayed propaganda skills learned while directing Voice of America into an ideological crusade to steer PBS and NPR rightward. Though the CPB is mandated by the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act to serve as a buffer between politics and public broadcasting, Tomlinson has used his position to quietly advance a right-wing agenda via stealth tactics including: secretly hiring a conservative consultant to monitor programs for “liberal bias,” attempting to hire a political operative as a fake ombudsman, and conducting secret polls in search of a nonexistent public disquietude towards PBS. All of these machinations were engineered to prove that public broadcasting was fundamentally liberal and in need of “balance.”
Under Tomlinson’s directive, this balance took the form of programming conservative shows like Paul Gigot’s The Journal Editorial Report and Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered (no longer airing on PBS), while cutting Now with Bill Moyers (now hosted by David Brancaccio) in half to 30 minutes. In addition to inserting conservative content, Tomlinson endeavored to stack the CPB board with like-minded ideologues, most notably with the shady selection process that resulted in Patricia Harrison’s appointment as CPB president. Harrison, a former Republican National Committee co-chair, had zero experience with broadcasting media and was selected after a mere two-month search process. The appointment drew swift condemnation from many Democrats and prompted an Inspector General investigation whose findings are expected in late October.
A new outrage occurred on Sept. 26 when Tomlinson helped install an ideological clone, Cheryl Halpern, as the new CPB Chair. Mother Jones magazine ranked Halpern and her husband among the top 100 hard-money donors to Republican candidates during the 2004 election. Halpern has demonstrated contempt for PBS similar to Tomlinson’s. During a Senate hearing she suggested that biased reporters should be penalized, despite the fact that CPB rules forbid such direct interference with programming decisions. Halpern even implied that editorializing journalists – in her view, investigative journalists like Bill Moyers – should be physically removed from the newsroom.
Another Republican operative, Gay Hart Gaines, a charter member and a chairman of Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC and Heritage Foundation member, was simultaneously appointed to the position of vice chair. Gaines is cut from the same cloth as Tomlinson and Halpern. According to David Corn of The Nation, she and her husband have donated at least half a million dollars to Republican projects since 1998. With these appointments, Republicans with close ties to the Bush administration control every important position within the CPB. Such an arrangement will no doubt further politicize PBS and may have a chilling effect on hard-hitting and diverse journalism. Under this new regime, we may see even less “programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences”–– part of public broadcasting’s original mandate.
It is important to recall that these attacks on public broadcasting are part of a long struggle. Republicans have been trying to starve public media for decades, and have recently used budget shortfalls brought on by Hurricane Katrina as yet another excuse for slashing funds. But the takeover from within the CPB is a new strategy. As Frank Rich of the New York Times noted, “The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers' expense.”
Fortunately, these ideologically driven attacks have not gone uncontested. A coalition of public interest groups including Free Press has kept up pressure on the CPB by channeling public outrage and calling for democratization. Most recently, the media reform coalition delivered statements demanding an end to CPB cronyism and backroom maneuverings, and more transparency and accountability to the public. Reform proposals have included open meetings, space for public testimony, and an end to commissioning secretive studies on PBS and NPR content without informing all members of the CPB board and the public. Time will soon tell whether these cries from the public have fallen on deaf ears.
Preventing the complete Foxification of PBS by holding CPB’s feet to the fire is an important first step in undoing earlier damage. But until we see significant changes in CPB governance, our Sesame Street friends like Big Bird are still in big trouble, and the public will remain shut out of public media.
Victor Pickard is a doctoral student in the Institution of Communications Research and a former producer for Media Matters, aired every Sunday on WILL 580. This summer he worked on telecommunications policy for Congresswoman Diane Watson (D-CA), who is a leading congressional voice in the fight to save public broadcasting. |
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Re: Right Wing Moving in on Sesame Street |
by from the right
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Oct 2005
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PBS and NPR take money from all people to broadcast to an audience that is largely "rich". No matter what the programming, you on the left should be bothered by this. |
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I'm Not Rich |
by Dose of Reality
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Oct 2005
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The right again trots out its strawmen with another inaccurate generalization.
I give to public broadcasting and I'm certainly not rich. I guarantee that most of those who watch Sesame Street sure aren't rich, although a very few of them might have rich parents.
It is true that the Bush Adminstration is working hard to ensure PBS and NPR only broadcast what is of interest to the rich, but the non-rich majority of public broadcasting's audience is resisting this subterfuge.
I would suggest that public broadcasting serves an audience whose intellects are somewhere above the level of the average right wing troll and that income has little to nothing to do with why they listen and watch.
For those with a more limited ability to appreciate the 'rich' world that exists beyond the cesspool of commercial broadcasting, there's Faux News and pro wrestling. Given the limited intellectual capacity of such people, it should be no surprise that "from the right" just doesn't get it. |
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I'm well off |
by Worker
cheroitaliana (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
05 Oct 2005
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What in the heck do you mean by broadcasting to "rich" audiences? That makes no sense. Do you mean that rich people watch programs that poor people do not? Maybe the poor should watch PBS so they can get rich. |
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Re: Right Wing Moving in on Sesame Street |
by from the right
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Oct 2005
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check the ratings info
who do you think watches opera and british TV and Nova, or listens to classical music or 24 hour news? It is not Joe 6-pack, and he is being taxed to help pay for it.
The programing is not all Seseme Street, Dora the Explorer and Dragontales.
And if you want to support it with donations, great. More power to ya. |
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Then How about Some Tax That Really Pisses People Off |
by Dose of Reality
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Oct 2005
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Personally, I'd much rather spend tax money on such things as healthcare for all, living wages, good public transit, hurricane relief, and -- oh -- public broadcasting, than wasting it on an illegal, failure of a war based on false pretenses and lies.
But YMMV. |
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Re: Right Wing Moving in on Sesame Street |
by roscoe
blatz (nospam) beer.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
06 Oct 2005
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all that sesame street toy crap is made in child unfriendly sweat shops in asia. WTF? |
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Re: Right Wing Moving in on Sesame Street |
by no solution
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Oct 2005
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Ultimately, public broadcasting will never be truly free from attack by partisans and corporate media hacks at the Federal level until it is completely viewer- and listener-supported. Children's programming and public interest programming is of no interest to anyone in Washington unless it's selling toys for their major donors or retransmitting their propaganda to prospective voters. |
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Re: Right Wing Moving in on Sesame Street |
by Lincoln Brigade
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Oct 2005
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Or better yet, supported by an independent fund that is guaranteed as a public trust. |
