Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the conservative who said that Public Broadcasting shows had a liberal bias and seemed ready to clean house has quit the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
According to the Washington Post, the resignation came one day after the agency’s inspector general delivered a report apparently critical of his leadership. If you follow this controversy, which we covered earlier with our posts here and here Tomlinson had not raised howls of protest for trying to make programs more objective; it was that he seemed determined to make them conservative to the extent that one joke was that CPB would eventually stand for Conservative Public Broadcasting. And his departure doesn’t mean the effort to reign in PBS by some conservative critics is over. But will it remain as strong as it once was?
The Post reports:
Tomlinson, a staunch conservative who was CPB’s chairman until September, brought unprecedented attention to his agency by publicly criticizing the alleged political favoritism of news programs, primarily those carried by the Public Broadcasting Service. CPB wields great influence over public radio and TV stations through its distribution of about $400 million in federal funding each year….
….The CPB’s inspector general has been investigating Tomlinson’s practice of using agency money to hire consultants and lobbyists without notifying the agency’s board. Tomlinson last year hired a little-known Indiana consultant to study the political leanings of guests on such programs as “Now With Bill Moyers” and “The Diane Rehm Show” on National Public Radio. He also hired lobbyists to defeat legislation that would have changed how CPB’s board is structured.
Why would he want to do that? It certainly sounds like the reason is: a desire for political control over PBS. MORE:
The inspector, Kenneth Konz, also had been looking into whether Tomlinson violated agency procedures in his recruiting of former Republican National Committee co-chairman Patricia de Stacy Harrison to be CPB’s chief executive, and into possible White House influence in the hiring of two in-house ombudsmen to critique news programs on NPR and PBS.
See our post here on Harrison and our belief that by hiring her the White House was basically throwing down the political gauntlet — picking someone who was one of the most divisive choices rather than picking a more low key GOPer that wouldn’t accentuate polarization over this issue.
In announcing Tomlinson’s departure yesterday, the CPB added a curious addendum: “The board does not believe that Mr. Tomlinson acted maliciously or with any intent to harm CPB or public broadcasting, and the board recognizes that Mr. Tomlinson strongly disputes the findings in the soon-to-be-released Inspector General’s report. The board expresses its disappointment in the performance of former key staff whose responsibility it was to advise the board and its members.”
CPB officials declined to identify the “former key staff” mentioned and a spokesman, Michael Levy, declined to answer questions, citing “a legal agreement” between the board and Tomlinson. He could not be reached for comment.
In many ways, Tomlinson’s resignation has more symbolic than practical import. His remaining term as a board member would have run out Jan. 31 (he could have stayed on the board through the end of next year had President Bush failed to appoint someone to replace him).
Despite his departure, the CPB remains firmly controlled by conservatives. Tomlinson’s successor as chairman, Cheryl F. Halpern, is a longtime contributor to Republicans, including President Bush and Sen. Trent Lott (Miss.). Its vice chairman, Gay Hart Gaines, another Republican contributor, was a founder and former chairman of GOPAC, a powerful GOP fundraising group.
Does all this taken together sound as if it’s part of a true effort to veer PBS coverage to more objective ground? Or veer it towards a partisan ground?
And does this quote from the New York Times sound as if it’s coming from someone who is seriously trying to ensure that Public Broadcasting keeps to a middle ground, sort of like CSPAN tries to do:
In a speech before he quit as chairman, Mr. Tomlinson said he had no regrets over “aggressively” trying to balance what he called overly liberal programming.
“I am highly skeptical of so-called nonpartisanship in public broadcasting because that appears to mean the same old liberals making the same old decisions,” he said.
So Tomlinson seems to be from the Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity School of analysis:”liberals…liberals..liberals” (Did he mention Hillary, too?)
Bottom line: there ARE thoughtful Republicans in Washington and elsewhere who could have been appointed to his post who could have coolly tried to ensure the GOP perspective was if not being represented than not unfairly characterized.
Digital Divide’s Timothy Karr writes:
Tomlinson has left behind a coterie of partisan hacks who have occupied the offices of an agency that was put in place by Congress to act as a “heat shield” — protecting public broadcasting producers from the hot political winds of Washington. Tomlinson and his conservative colleagues — including new board chair Cheryl Halpern and president Patricia Harrison — have turned the CPB’s “heat shield” into their political blow torch.
They have governed the CPB like a chapter of the Elks Club, and not an agency responsive to taxpayers and the public interest — imposing a narrow agenda on programming and hatching other political schemes in a series of meetings that were closed to the public. The Inspector General report, which has yet to be made available, is expected to detail wide ranging ethical and procedural violations as well as misuse of funds by the erstwhile chair.
There’s an aspect that none of the news reports mention.
With President George Bush’s poll numbers now going as steadily south as Northeast coast retirees to Florida in the winter, will this move to pepper CPB with people who are NOT just members of a party but partisan activists of one party begin to weaken?
Remember, this all came to fruition at a time when the White House assumed it had lots of clout and political capital and could pretty much do whatever it wanted.
But today — with each day and each new poll — it seems as if the White House’s clout is strengthening as much as Majority Leader Bill Frist’s public image and its political capital has begun to look as plentiful as the hairs on Patrick Stewart’s head.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.