Common Cause President Chellie Pingree on New Yorker PBS story

BS story. ( Bill Moyers cut to 30 minutes for Tucker Carlson, is there no end to this garbage from repugs?

Statement by Common Cause President Chellie Pingree on New Yorker BS Story

It is deeply troubling to learn that public broadcasting has been subject to intense ideological pressure, as reported this week by The New Yorker. Public broadcasting should not find itself in the crosshairs of a partisan firing squad. At a time when Americans are finding it more and more difficult to get past the clutter and partisanship on commercial TV and radio to find truthful sources of information about their government, this ideological pressure may gag one of the few sources of independent, substantive news and commentary that Americans can count on.

The fact that members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides federal funds to public radio and TV, should play politics with its program content should disturb us all, whatever our political views may be.

snip-

The decision by CPB to fund two programs -- one hosted by Tucker Carlson, who speaks for conservatives on CNN's “Crossfire,” and one moderated by Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, at the same time that “NOW with Bill Moyers,” which receives no CPB funds, is cut from an hour to 30 minutes;

What appears to be a Bush Administration litmus test for choosing members of the CPB. When CPB board candidate Chon Noriega, a UCLA media professor and co-founder of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, was interviewed by the White House, he was asked whether the CPB should intervene in programming “deemed politically biased.” When Professor Noriega said intervention should be used in only extraordinary circumstances, the appointment process ground to a halt, and the White House has asked Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) to put forward another candidate.

The observation by journalist Moyers, who told The New Yorker author Ken Auletta: “This is the first time in my 32 years of public broadcasting that CPB has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons.”

more- (with numbers to call/fax protest



http://www.commoncause.org/action/action.cfm?topicid=7

get the full blast that's going to be launched against this nation in the next few months. John Kerry, Democrats, any critics of Bush, etc. are going to be basically banned or spit upon in one big media gang bang. I predict we will be stunned with what is going to happen.

Still, she's doing good stuff now at Common Cause.