you-are.us

In the battle over the content on PBS, NPR, and other federally-funded media outlets, Kenneth Tomlinson pitted himself against a lot of liberal foes. In his former role as Chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Tomlinson designated Bill Moyers as his arch nemesis and considered the PBS program show of news and opinion Now as an example of rampant liberal bias in publicly-funded media. Moyers, who hosted Now for three years and has done many shows for PBS, bit his tongue as Tomlinson raged and schemed at the CPB. After last year�s season, Moyers stepped aside as host of Now and is currently serving as President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. This season, David Brancaccio is hosting Now.

Tomlinson, a Bush appointee, earlier this year stepped down as CPB chair and then left the board altogether on November 3. In his rage about liberal bias, Tomlinson saw fit to flout numerous points in the CPB�s contracting rules and code of ethics. His departure earlier month came just days prior to the public release of the report from CPB�s Inspector General, Kenneth Konz, which found Tomlinson to have violated the CPB�s rules. Despite the Konz report, Tomlinson remains the Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors which oversees the US government�s international broadcasting services including Voice of America.

Moyers and his brand of journalism has been scrutinized by Tomlinsonââ�¬â�¢s CPB and have been commented on in an aggressive vein by conservative columnists. For example, there is this <a href=”statement from Jeffrey Neumayr of The American Spectator:

I see a pervasive bias. PBS looks like a liberal monopoly to me, and Bill Moyers is Exhibit A of that very strident left-wing bias. You can see it in also that recently-canceled show Postcards from Buster, which is a cartoon depicting a rabbit that goes to Vermont to stay with a lesbian couple in order to learn about politically correct values. So I think the problem of bias is quite deep, and I applaud Ken Tomlinson for making an attempt to correct it.

Moyers has just fired back at this critics in an interview with John Eggerton of Broadcasting and Cable:

Right-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive reporting as liberal.

We were biased, all right�in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq.

We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories, and the administration turned its hit men loose on us.

In this latest battle in the political and cultural wars, liberals have wonââ�¬â��Tomlinson has been chastised and his machinations revealed while Moyers and other journalists under attack have come out looking good. What should not be overlooked, however, is that Now in general and Moyers in specific rarely, if ever, engage in ââ�¬Å�aggressive reporting.ââ�¬? Moyers is the king of soft-ball interviewing. He tosses out questions, lets the interviewee hit home runs, and, when he is not nodding in agreement, asks follow up questions that help interviewees make their points if they failed the first time around. Does Moyers challenge his interviewees? Does he question their bases? Does he wonder about their biases and their sources of funding? No, no, and no. Now is a wonderful program, but it does not exhibit aggressive reporting. I would liken Moyers’s attitude toward his interviewees to that of Ahmaad Rashad to Michael Jordanââ�¬â��he wants to be their friend, and every one feels good, right, and justified at the end of the interview. As a television journal of opinion, Now has an important place, but letââ�¬â�¢s not call it or what Moyers does ââ�¬Å�aggressive reporting.ââ�¬?