Free Republic

Huilu has added the 1940's(?) Brit 'Sherlock Holmes' TV series to their line up, with episodes 1 to 39. Back when I only had terrestrial TV, I used to enjoy watching the nightly episode aired on my local PBS channel before going to sleep.

This week it's ABC News' Jake Tapper asking why the Obama team was treating one of the "sister organizations" so badly -- and the news that the White House had tried to block a Fox News reporter from interviewing the so-called pay czar. (After all the networks objected, the White House relented.) It seems like time for a survey http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/10/in_white_house_vs_fox_news_war.html

The federal government has accelerated its $16 million dollar PR campaign to brainwash and coerce increasingly suspicious Americans into taking the swine flu vaccine by weaving their propaganda into a popular pre-school show for children currently airing on PBS Kids. Sid the Science Kid is a half-hour series produced by Jim Henson Productions and KCET in Los Angeles, California. The program is bankrolled in part by The Boeing Company, a titan of the military-industrial complex. During an episode of the show set to air on Monday, the computer-generated characters are shown dancing around and singing about how their are taking...

The PBS news program Frontline is about to launch an "expose" of the financial crisis and blame it on free markets. The program is titled, The Warning, and is to be first aired on October 20. It will blame the current financial crisis on supposed free market advocates (and this, I guess, is not a PBS joke), Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Greenspan, at the time, was the head of the Federal Reserve, which is responsible through monetary manipulations for the distortions that do cause the business cycle. Rubin is a former Goldman Sachs CEO, who like all...

Watching 'Masterpiece Mystery, on Sunday hight, they announced that my local PBS channel would begin airing 'Mystey' on Thursday nights at 10:00 PM EDT. I don't know if this will be nationwide, but if you enjoy the show, you might want to check your guide. They said they'd be starting with 'Foyle's War' season IV, a season I am pretty sure I have not yet seen. (hopefully) I always seem to catch the last few episodes of the final season of 'Foyle' when I have managed to see it.

As the housing market began booming in mid-2000, Wells Fargo & Co. teamed up with prominent African American commentator and PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley and financial author Kelvin Boston, the host of “Moneywise,”...to host something called “Wealth Building” seminars in black neighborhoods. Smiley was the keynote speaker, and the big draw...Smiley would charge up the audience — and rattle the Wells Fargo executives in attendance — by launching into a story about how he hated banks, and how they used to refuse to lend him money for his real estate projects in Compton, Calif., and elsewhere. After Hurricane...

Obviously, the "main stream" media are hard of hearing and seeing. About 2 million mad-as-hell taxpayers assembling in Washington, D.C. for the largest-ever (most well-behaved ever, most respectful ever) protest did not make it onto their radar screens (or our TV screens). They need our help. Maybe we cannot repeat an assembly of 2 million mad-as-hell taxpaying patriots in one place, but surely those who longed to go and couldn't would love to be a part of Operation "Can You Hear Us Now?" I'll bet for every one patriot who went to D.C. there are 10-20 more who wished they...

Question... My wife and I was watching tv flipping stations and we watched a little of the Frost/Nixon interview (personally I don't know what the big deal is anyway). There is one thing that I have noticed, the Obama logo on the bottom corner.. Is this happening on all PBS Stations or just one???

Just two years ago, WGBH celebrated the opening of an $85 million state-of-the-art headquarters that symbolized its self-described status as a “public media powerhouse.’’ Today, the nonprofit is coming to grips with the economic realities of operating radio and television stations in a recession. While WGBH produces some of the Public Broadcasting Service’s marquee programming, including “Frontline,’’ “Nova,’’ and “Antiques Roadshow,’’ it must trim about $7 million from its budget this year. That means layoffs, wage freezes, and unpaid furloughs. (snip) The health of WGBH, which started in 1951, is especially important to PBS. The network depends on the station...

In a recent radio address, President Obama sought to debunk some of the "outrageous myths" about health care reform that he said were circulating on the Internet, cable TV and in town hall forums. Despite the president's efforts, recent polls show that many Americans continue to believe that Congress' reform legislation will create "death panels," will insure illegal immigrants and other rumors. To help make sense of it all, two reporters take your questions on separating health care reform facts from fiction.

(English-language translation) SAN JUAN - Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting President Israel “Ray” Cruz confirmed that he will submit a plan to the Workers' General Union (UGT) on Friday to lay off an undisclosed number of its members. "We are submitting a layoff plan tomorrow which includes a group of union members," Cruz told radio station WKAQ. According to Cruz, a one-hour cut in the workday was discontinued on Thursday following the protest the UGT held the day before in front of [PBS affiliate] WIPR in Hato Rey. "Also because of a complaint that was filed against me on...

PBS chief Paula Kerger (KUR'-gur) says budget numbers tell the tale of how public TV is faring under the Obama administration, compared to that of former President George W. Bush. Kerger said that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's $430 million budget for this year was left intact by President Barack Obama, in contrast to the Bush administration's repeated bids to reduce or eliminate the federal subsidy. Kerger says Congress countered Bush's actions.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Jinx Taylor always thought her father had impeccable taste. Now she knows it's true. Four pieces of jade that her father bought in the 1930s and '40s at No. 10 Jade St. in Beijing were valued last month at more than $1 million on PBS' "Antiques Roadshow" while the program was in Raleigh, a record appraisal for the show. They're so valuable, in fact, that Taylor can't afford the insurance on the keepsakes and plans to sell them. "I adored my father," Taylor, who lives along North Carolina's coast, said in a recent phone interview. "He was...

ARLINGTON, Va., July 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- PBS today announced an agreement with impreMedia, the No. 1 Hispanic News and Information Company in the U.S. in Online and Print, to live stream PBS' NewsHour feed of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings, translated to Spanish, on impreMedia's Web site (http://www.impre.com/sotomayor). If confirmed, Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court justice and the third woman to serve on the high court. "As public media PBS and our member stations have a strong commitment to ensuring that citizens have the information they need to fully participate in our democracy," said John...

The Public Broadcasting Service recently announced it will not allow new religious programming on their taxpayer-subsidized airwaves. The handful of stations that have shown a Catholic Mass or Mormon devotions will be allowed to continue, but the other 300-plus stations have been instructed to avoid any kind of evangelism. Welcome to Barack Obama's new world order. News reports explained that the PBS station services committee insisted on applying a 1985 rule that all PBS shows must be "noncommercial, nonpartisan and nonsectarian." To everyone who's watched a pledge drive or contemplated a toy store stuffed with "Sesame Street" toys, the idea...

The tolerance channel has banned God. No, that’s not true. All they want him to do is “migrate.” They want God to “migrate” from TV to the Internet. I’m talking about PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whatever alphabet-soup taxpayer-supported agency it is that has made untold millions from “Sesame Street.” In its enlightened wisdom, it has outlawed God. More specifically, it has forbidden “sectarian” programming. If you are going to be a PBS station, you can’t have any religious broadcasting. I think they really mean Christian religious broadcasting, but they can’t say something like that out loud. At least...

Cardinal Sean O'Malley celebrates Mass on camera Arlington, Va., Jun 18, 2009 / 07:24 am (CNA).- The members of PBS’ national board have voted to ban any new religious programming from their affiliate stations, citing both concerns about “public trust” and a 25-year-old rule that has never been rigorously enforced. Anticipation of the vote already resulted in one station cancelling its Mass for Shut-Ins. The 1985 rule in question requires PBS affiliates to air only non-commercial, non-partisan and non-sectarian content. Reportedly six affiliates broadcast “sectarian” programs produced by local religious groups, such as the Mass for Shut-Ins. These affiliates...

PBS, citing what it says is a rule that has been on the books for 25 years, has issued a ban on new religious programs to local affiliates. This edict means no new religious programs — like weekly Mass or devotional readings — will be aired. Six PBS affiliate stations that currently carry religious programming will be allowed to continue doing so. Religious groups defended the programming as a community service that reflects the makeup and interests of the cities that offer them. "This is community-based, locally produced programming that fills a community need," said Susan Briggs, director of communications...

On Tuesday June 16, 2009 the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) met in its offices in Crystal City, located in Arlington, Virginia, to discuss the pressing issues they face. Top on its agenda was to consider whether it would continue airing “religious programming” or allow any more such programming to be aired on its member stations in the future. In explaining its mission on its’ own website the Corporation notes “…that PBS is a private, nonprofit corporation, founded in 1969, whose members are America’s public TV stations. PBS provides quality TV programming and related services to...

PBS to Begin Phasing Out Religious Programming From Airwaves PBS board members have decided to enforce a rule barring religious broadcasts in a move that spells the beginning of the end for most spiritual shows like Catholic Masses and Mormon devotionals on public television. By Joseph Abrams FOXNews.com Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Former AmeriCorps Official Says Obama Removed Him for 'Doing My Job' PBS board members, who for 25 years have turned a blind eye to religious programming at some of their member stations' religious programing, have decided to enforce a rule banning the broadcasts -- a move that spells...

A Public Broadcasting Service board in Washington will decide Tuesday if WLAE-Channel 32 can continue its daily live broadcast of the Catholic Mass celebrated at St. Louis Cathedral.

The "Mass for Shut-Ins" has been broadcast in Washington DC for 60 years ― the last thirteen on WHUT a PBS affiliate. WLAE in New Orleans, also a PBS affiliate, has been broadcasting a Mass since 1984. Now, PBS is considering a proposal that re-interprets a rule that would prohibit any PBS affiliate from broadcasting any religious (called sectarian) content or be refused the ability to broadcast PBS content. The existing rule requires affiliates to present programs that are noncommercial, nonpartisan and nonsectarian. However, the non-sectarian part of the rule has always been loosely interpreted as has, some would say,...

Here’s one sign that the zeitgeist in Barack Obama’s Washington is going to please the secular left. On Saturday, Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi highlighted a policy shift brewing inside PBS: the PBS Board is going to vote in June on a committee’s recommendation that PBS strip the affiliation of any station that carries "sectarian" content. Broadcast religious programming – like a Catholic Mass – and you’ll lose every PBS program from Sesame Street to the NewsHour. Apparently, PBS passed a fairness-and-balance policy in 1985 that insisted on "Three Nons" – noncommercial, nonpartisan, and nonsectarian. Are they serious? PBS routinely...

Last Monday began the PBS Series, "WE SHALL REMAIN" with their first Episode "After The Mayflower". The ones that will get my attention begin next week, Monday April 20th, 2009, and especially the April 27th "Trail of Tears" episode which will feature "The Ridge", the Cherokee leader and his clan who I wrote about in "Jesus Wept" An American Story. It will be VERY interesting to see how PBS deals with this situation or if they will be overtaken with the usual political correctness and historical rumor. My story is taken from documented records as well as family letters saved...

Al Jazeera television is known for airing Islamic extremist videos and even hosted an on-air birthday celebration for convicted Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar who murdered four Israelis in 1979. "It is a professional institution but it is a militant institution that wants to convey an ideological Jihadi message," said Walid Phares, a terrorism analyst for FOX News. Critics charge that the Jihadist message now is making its way to public broadcasting in America.

Video and transcript of interview included (From the Office of the House Republican Leader website) + link to WSJ explanation of GOP alternative. http://conservativebrawler.blogspot.com/2009/04/house-republican-leader-boehner.html

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- US News & World Report contributing editor and PBS television show host Bonne Erbe came under fire for her celebration of abortion increases in light of the sour economy. Now, the media wallah is defending her position after hearing news that the use of food stamps has risen.The use of food stamps, according to Agriculture Department figures, rose in all but four states during January and three states saw usage rise more than five percent."I blogged earlier this week about the rise in birth control usage and abortion due to the recession," Erbe writes today....

Hell hath no fury like a feminist writer directing a hissy fit at the pope. Bonnie Erbe -- the US News & World Report contributing editor and PBS "To the Contrary" host who argued that Bristol Palin is more "mature" than her abstinence education-advocating mother -- finds the pope "horrifically ignorant" when it comes to HIV/AIDS. What exactly did the pontiff say that set Erbe off? Try, "AIDS cannot be overcome by the distribution of condoms," hardly a controversial, implausible statement, but one that, to Erbe, showed the pope has "no sympathy" for women in Africa. Yet in the...

WASHINGTON, March 18, 2009 – The operation in Afghanistan “is absolutely winnable and will be won,” the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan said yesterday on PBS’s “Jim Lehrer Newshour.” But winning, Army Gen. David D. McKiernan stressed, will take more than military might. “It’s going to take security, it’s going to take governance, and it’s going to take socio-economic progress – all three of those in a comprehensive way,” he said. As commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, McKiernan said, he’s not seeing a greater al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan. “But we do know that al-Qaida...

The recession has spread from Wall Street to Sesame Street. The home of Elmo and Oscar the Grouch announced on Wednesday that it would eliminate a fifth of its 355-strong workforce as market turmoil ate into its income and assets.

NEW YORK – The crisis on Wall Street is plaguing Sesame Street. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit producer of "Sesame Street" and other kids' programs, is cutting about one-fifth of its work force because of the economic downturn. The New York-based company said Wednesday that it's eliminating 67 of 355 staff positions. Declaring it is "not immune to the unprecedented challenges of today's economic environment," the company pronounced a need "to operate with fewer resources in order to achieve our strategic priorities."

As the housing bubble burst and trillions of dollars' worth of toxic mortgages began to go bad in 2007, fear spread through the massive firms that form the heart of Wall Street. By the spring of 2008, burdened by billions of dollars of bad mortgages, the investment bank Bear Stearns was the subject of rumors that it would soon fail. "Rumors are such that they can just plain put you out of business," Bear Stearns' former CEO Alan "Ace" Greenberg tells FRONTLINE. The company's stock had dropped from $171 to $57 a share, and it was hours from declaring bankruptcy....

PBS's Erbe: Dems Must 'Gerrymander Away', Politicize Upcoming CensusTaxpayer-subsidized journalist Bonnie Erbe has some advice for Democrats: use the 2010 Census and subsequent redistricting to your maximum advantage to gerrymander and "gender-mander" the Congress chock full of left-wing constituencies. Writes the PBS "To the Contrary" host on a March 3 post at her Jefferson Street blog at US News & World Report (emphasis mine):Depoliticize the Census? Surely they jest! Taking politics out of the Census is like taking milk out of the cow or coal out of Newcastle or diamonds out of Tiffany. Politics is the lifeblood of the Census—without...

Tucson's three major public television outlets are working on plans to merge operations into a single state-of-the-art production center Downtown — if all of the stations can stay on the air long enough to pull it off. All three — Access Tucson, KUAT and city-owned Tucson12.tv — say the talks are in their infancy, and a new center couldn't open for at least two or three years. Each of the three public stations caters to a distinct local population. Their content has a decidedly Tucson bent and is free to explore ideas and events without being given over to advertiser-driven...

What we do know from the tapes was that Hoover thought he had flawless gaydar. Beschloss writes that Hoover believed, based on a report from liberal columnist Drew Pearson, that the Republicans were about to drop a "bombshell" on a Johnson administration official on Oct. 31, a bit of intelligence that he had passed along to Johnson. On the morning of Oct. 31, Johnson telephoned Hoover for new gossip, and the conversation ambled toward a Navy employee. LBJ: … They raised the question of the way he combed his hair and the way he did something else, but they had...

For example, Dr Eugenie Scott of the staunchly anticreationist National Center for Science Education (NCSE) revealed their agenda when she said: “ … I would describe myself as a humanist or a nontheist. I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day! … What we [such clergy and atheists] have in common is that we want to see evolution taught in the public schools … .”4

As I was driving home this evening I had my car radio tuned to NPR (National Public Radio) and during my half hour drive heard several references to banks, bankers and their responsibility for the economic mess we are currently in. It seems that here are two sets of culprits. The Left (...) who place all the blame on bankers. And the Right who believe that government policies were at the root of the problem. I have no doubt at all that there are villains in both camps. But no one, even a greedy banker, goes out to do business...

Northern California Public Broadcasting will cut 13 percent of its budget and lay off 30 employees because the recession has reduced the corporate giving that funds much of the organization. The stations' 291 employees were told Monday of the move, which officials expect will save $8 million. No reporters will leave San Francisco's KQED-FM, and no TV staff will depart, officials said. Employees with enough seniority were offered a buyout package; others were dismissed immediately.KQED-TV, which produces shows such as "Check, Please!" and "Quest," will continue to develop new episodes this spring, but production of future episodes of all series...

Last evening’s story on the tragic ice storm in Kentucky and surrounding states contrasted strangely with the reporting surrounding hurricane Katrina. The story was largely upbeat with local responders coping with the horrific after-effects of the storm. Note that dozens of people died as a result of the storm so it was not merely inconvenient. Hundreds of thousands are still without power or heat and may be for as long as a month in freezing temperatures during the coldest winter in a decade. The primary contrast was the fact the report made absolutely no mention of FEMA or – for...

If you were dying to know what Gwen Ifill was thinking when the controversy arose about her so-called Obama book and how that might have effected her ability to moderate the 2008 vice-presidential debate - now's your chance. Ifill, the host of PBS's "Washington Week" appeared at the Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 24 to promote her new book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." The book was a focal point of controversy last fall and questions were raised as to whether Ifill could be an impartial moderator of the vice-presidential debate,...

NEW YORK - The Al Jazeera Network plans to announce on Thursday that it has signed a deal to run its news on Worldfocus, a syndicated nightly news program produced in New York and distributed throughout the United States. The deal would help the international news network, one of the top services in the Arabic-speaking world, broaden its reach in the United States, where it so far has been available to only a limited audience. Worldfocus, hosted by former NBC News correspondent Martin Savidge, is produced by New York City public broadcaster WLIW and syndicated to a number of Public...

The irony of it all is the Jews who believe they are ‘chosen'...better than anyone else, and entitled by God to kill and steal homes and land...are shooting themselves in the foot. Madoff, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, all Jewish American companies and investors, lied to the American people about their true financial status, and have sunk us all...

Here is video of Vice-President Dick Cheney making the case that the United States has achieved most of it's goals in Iraq and saying in answer to a question from Jim Lehrer that the Iraq War was worth it . . . . (watch video)

Upcoming PBS Program LOOKING FOR LINCOLN SHEDS A SCHOLARLY NEW LIGHT ON THE LINCOLN LEGEND New York, NY (November 20, 2008) – Public media provider WNET.ORG is playing a major role in the nationwide Lincoln Bicentennial celebration in 2009 with Looking for Lincoln, an unprecedented two-hour broadcast, online, and outreach project that explores the life and legacy of the man widely considered one of our best and most enigmatic presidents. The documentary, hosted by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (African American Lives, Oprah’s Roots), addresses many of the controversies surrounding Lincoln – race, equality, religion, politics, and depression –...

If the liberal media ever had any pretense of objectivity regarding Barack Obama, it is crumbling as the Inauguration of the 44th President draws near. This is vide of PBS's Tavis Smiley, who regards himself as a journalist, appearing on Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough today. Smiley blatantly says that he sees it as his job to "help make Obama a great President." Smiley begins talking about Obama at the 2:58 mark of the video. It is one thing, as an American, to want the nation's President to do what is best for America, and to want him/her to do...

Listen to an excerpt of tonight's NewsHour interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, where the congressional leader says that lawmakers must "act now" on an economic recovery plan and that Congress may delay its February recess if a plan is not in place.

Filmmaker George Butler wants his friends to know he's very much alive, despite a premature obituary on "The Charlie Rose Show" this week. During Rose's annual New Year's Eve tribute on PBS to notable figures who died during the year, he included Butler, whose 1977 film "Pumping Iron" featured a then-unknown bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger. The screen even flashed a Butler tombstone, 1943-2008. The PBS show had confused him with another George Butler, a longtime jazz record executive who signed Wynton Marsalis, who died April 9. snip- Rose, who did not immediately respond to e-mail messages seeking comment, apologized at...

In our year-end edition of the Best of Notable Quotables, two of our winners for outrageous liberalism were unloaded on the Charlie Rose show on PBS, a very comfortable TV salon for liberals to speak freely without conservative rebuttal.

Someone tell Jim Lehrer the election is over he can stop being a shill for the Democratic Party. Either that or he has totally gone off the deep end. On Friday's Newshour he went on the defensive for Illinois Governor Blagojevich wondering "What's the big deal here?" he goes on to say that he just went a little over the line, and that what Blago was doing was the normal was of doing business.

Dylan Mortimer's "Public Prayer Booth" was the subject of a controversial report from National Public Radio. A pagan priestess runs into the president of the atheists in a phone booth in New York. No, it's not a joke — it's the start of a controversial report from National Public Radio — and your tax dollars may have paid for it. New York City officials this fall launched an art project called "Public Prayer Booth," which features a modified phone booth rigged up with a flip-down kneeler. Passers-by, if they're in the mood, can bend to their (padded) knee and say...