Free Republic

A panel of 36 distinguished public policy experts and scholars—ranging from Nobel laureate Milton Friedman to Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey—has selected the Internal Revenue Code as the No. 1 item on this year’s Human Events list of the Ten Most Harmful Government Programs. The programs elected by our judges don’t just cost money, they also attack our values and corrode the spirit of liberty that makes America the greatest nation. As in previous years, we initially asked our judges to nominate programs for the list. The judges were then sent ballots listing...

War waged over public broadcasting July 21, 2005 BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Sen. Arlen Specter, a busy man with multiple duties, was understandably unprepared July 11 as he chaired a rare Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing about public television. When he asked whether there was an opening statement for him to read, the subcommittee staff director replied there was none but handed him questions. Therein lies a behind-the-scenes story about public air wars in Washington. The hearing's purpose was to grill Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Corporation for Public Broadcasting board chairman, about hiring two consultants in his campaign against liberal bias...

WASHINGTON, July 15 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee has somewhat allayed fears of drastic budget cuts for public broadcasting by approving $551 million in funding. The spending package approved Thursday would fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting near current levels and pay for technology upgrades and children's programming, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. The U.S. House at first reduced public broadcasting's funding by 46 percent, but later restored about half the cuts. The Senate is expected to consider its Appropriations Committee's version in the coming weeks and, if approved, will have to come to a compromise with...

What can we do about the hostile takeover of the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio by the right wing? That they have taken over is beyond dispute. Ken Tomlinson is chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and he has succeeded in placing former Republican National Committee co-chairwoman and fellow neocon Patricia Harrison into the position of president and CEO of CPB. While we were focused on draconian budget cuts proposed by a House committee, Tomlinson and Harrison were doing their inside magic. Literally millions of Americans sent e-mails to Congress demanding that the 25 percent cut in...

It's time to set the record straight about Kenneth Tomlinson and his role at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Ken is under fire for having hired a consultant to assess the political slant of the television and radio stations that receive public funds from CPB. He found that some news shows on PBS & NPR have a liberal tilt, and expressed that opinion and commentary should at least be clarified so that it is not confused with facts. He further enraged supporters of the public broadcasting status quo by endorsing Patricia Harrison, a former co-chair of the Republican National...

It's time to take the public out of the Public Broadcasting Service. That is, it's time to cut taxpayer-funded broadcasting loose and let it compete.... Conservatives have long charged PBS with liberal programming bias. Now liberals are claiming that congressional Republicans are trying to influence programming and personnel. Those charges got louder with the naming Thursday of former GOP co-chair Pat Harrison as president and chief executive of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.... This came after 16 Senate Democrats — including New York's Chuck Schumer and both Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey — called for the dismissal...

Clifford the Big Red Dog is barking at proposed cuts to PBS funding by the federal government. Clifford was joined on Capitol Hill Tuesday by Democratic lawmakers, other supporters of public broadcasting and children who were carrying signs that read "Don't Can Oscar," a reference to "Sesame Street." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said parents tell her everyday that they're concerned about sex and violence on television. A House committee voted last week to cut next year's federal funding of public broadcasting by 25 percent. Republicans cite the huge federal deficit. But more than a dozen Democrats have called for the...

Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists last year that were not disclosed to the corporation's board, people involved in the inquiry said on Wednesday. One of the lobbyists was retained at the direction of the corporation's Republican chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, they said, and the other at the suggestion of his Republican predecessor, who remains on the board. The investigators, in the corporation's inspector general's office, are also examining $14,170 in payments made under contracts - which Mr. Tomlinson took the unusual step of signing personally, also without the knowledge...

The growing controversy over the Bush administration’s attempts to alter the perceived liberal bias in PBS programming has led one media insider to urge: Consider pulling the plug on the network. In his Media Matters column in the Los Angeles Times, David Shaw asks, "Do we really want or need PBS anymore?" Shaw points out that when PBS’s parent, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was created in 1967, television was largely dominated by three commercial networks, while today we live in a "500-channel universe." "But politics, not the availability of more alternatives, is the primary reason to question the continued...

At the recent so-called "media reform" conference funded by George Soros, his friend Bill Moyers delivered a keynote address. Most of it was predictable left-wing rhetoric. But he did make a point we have been making-the American taxpayers should not be forced to spend their money on a public TV show featuring members of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Moyers noted that Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, put up a considerable sum of money, about $5 million, for a new weekly broadcast featuring Paul Gigot and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Moyers...

EXTRAVAGANCE OF LANGUAGE, SWELLING sometimes to full-throated verbal hysteria, is a defining quality of today's politics. Even so, we confess to being surprised at the cascades of abuse that have recently fallen about the ears of Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Tomlinson is a bit taken aback too, apparently--though so far he shows no signs of withering under the assault. Good for him.President Clinton appointed Tomlinson to the CPB board in 2000, and President Bush lifted him to the chairmanship three years later. During his time on the board, which oversees and underwrites public television...

When I think about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I can't help but think of Pravda, the official newspaper and mouthpiece of the Communist Party back in the days of the Soviet Union. Now, don't get me wrong. It really isn't any of the similarities in their ideological bent that connects them in my mind. Rather, it is the concept underlying both, the idea that the government ought to be in the news business, the documentary business, or even the entertainment business. When government is involved in producing or subsidizing news coverage or political and historical documentaries — even entertainment...

Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican who chairs. Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in the U.S. that controls both the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) caused quite a stir when he hired a consultant to monitor the television network for balance. Tomlinson, not unlike many others, feels that the public broadcaster has tilted too far to the left. The New York Times reported that the consultant is monitoring Now with Bill Moyers (that is now without Bill Moyers) and counting how many of the show’s guests are anti-Bush, anti-business and anti-Tom Delay. Any action to provide better balance...

WASHINGTON, May 15 - Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday. The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations. Top...

he last thing Americans need is public broadcasting where the politics of the moment limits the news of the day. Yet that could be where the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is heading if Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman, keeps pushing for partisan Republicans in the management of public television and radio. Mr. Tomlinson, a former editor in chief of Reader's Digest, has repeatedly criticized PBS as too liberal over all and has said that his goal is to satisfy a broader constituency. Satisfying more people with public television and radio is a worthy aim, but several recent surveys for public broadcasting...

Taxpayer-Funded NPR Fights Christian Radio NewsMax.com Wires Friday, March 19, 2004 FREDERICK, Md. – One morning last month, WJTM-FM began the day with its usual fare of Christian preaching and prayer. But that afternoon, the programming changed to something that some longtime listeners find offensive: National Public Radio. WJTM, a station reaching 1.2 million potential listeners on the northwestern outskirts of Baltimore and Washington, had been taken over by WYPR-FM, an NPR affiliate in Baltimore. The change, which has been challenged by two congressmen and dozens of listeners, reflects a battle being waged nationwide for ears at the lower end...

wo weeks ago, word came down from the Pacifica Foundation that WBAI (99.5 FM), one of five stations in the Pacifica radio network, must lay off 14 full-time employees by December—or face the possibility of closing next year. The rationale for the cuts was blunt: WBAI's latest fundraising drive fell short of its $1.2 million goal, bringing in only $800,000. Cutting payroll is probably the easiest way to recoup the missing $400,000. But some members of the WBAI community have balked at management's contemporaneous decision to lay off staff and to introduce a novel format that might be called "progressive...

In what has to be the most yellow streak of broadcasting in years, the Fox movie channel has canceled the colection of Charlie Chan films because they were afraid a few folks might not understand that Stephin Fetchit was a ROLE played by an actor....It a gutless move that ranks up there with the other great politically correct moves that show America has turned into a liberal pond of weakkneed corporations under extortion by the likes of jesse jackass and al sharpy sharpton, the Fox movie channel restored the films to perfection, advertised them for weeks, and pulled them because...

Created by the Public Broadcasting Act and signed into law by President Johnson in 1967, the government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is legally required to "constitute an expression of diversity and excellence" through programming "that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities." It was also mandated to promote "locally relevant" programming that is "reflective of America's common values and cultural diversity." But progressive media historian Robert McChesney (Alternative Radio, 11/99) says the CPB has "gone almost nowhere near those principles," adding, "What groups in society is [the CPB] trying to give voice to? It...