Turning PBS into another propaganda tool

Blatham -- this is sad, but not really new. Unlike PBS, which is admirably independent, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe always were propaganda tools for whatever administration held power in Washington. My Russian piano teacher once told me that back in the Soviet Union, when listening to foreign radio stations could get you into jail, dissidents religiously listened to BBC world service. RFE and VOA, by contrast, were generally not considered worth such a risk. My teacher and her friends would not go to jail for listening to American instead of Soviet propaganda, but would take that risk for real news. That was back in the sixties and seventies, so we're talking about a fairly old phenomenon here.

Plus, both stations always had a reputation here in Germany for laundering money and providing cover for CIA projects and agents. (RFE used to be in Munich.) How well deserved this reputation was I can't say.

It is Tomlinson's (and the other individuals noted) relationship to domestic broadcasting which is of primary importance.

Former public broadcasting chief violated ethics, investigators allege
Tomlinson said to exceed powers in bid to aid GOP
By Matea Gold, Los Angeles Times | November 16, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting repeatedly violated the organization's rules and code of ethics in his efforts to promote conservatives in the system, an endeavor that included consultation with White House officials, according to an internal investigation released yesterday.

The 67-page report, the culmination of a six-month investigation by Kenneth A. Konz, the corporation's inspector general, portrayed former chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson as a rogue appointee who often exceeded his authority in his determination to right what he viewed as a liberal tilt in public broadcasting.

Konz's report depicted the corporation as a dysfunctional institution in which there has been little oversight over hiring and contracting and minimal communication between the professional staff and the politically appointed board.

In a statement included in the inspector general's report, Tomlinson, who resigned his board position earlier this month, denied wrongdoing. He called the findings a triumph of ''politics over good judgment" and disputed the allegations as ''malicious and irresponsible."

''Unfortunately, the inspector general's preconceived and unjustified findings will only help to maintain the status quo, and other reformers will be discouraged from seeking change," he said.

According to the report, Tomlinson consulted with Bush administration officials, including Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, about his efforts, Konz found, even though the former chairman told the Los Angeles Times in May that he had had ''absolutely no contact from anyone at the White House saying we need to do this or that with public broadcasting."

But Konz said he discovered that in late 2003 and again earlier this year, Tomlinson exchanged e-mails with White House officials about possible candidates to serve as the corporation's president. Some of the e-mails discussed Tomlinson's desire to hire Patricia Harrison, a former Republican Party cochairwoman, whom the board appointed to the post in June.

''While cryptic in nature, their timing and subject matter gives the appearance that the former chairman was strongly motivated by political considerations in filling the president/CEO position," Konz wrote.

In an interview, the inspector general said Tomlinson exchanged e-mails with ''two or three" White House officials, including Rove. He declined to name the other officials.

The report said that Tomlinson was so zealous about the need to bring the political balance farther to the right that he instructed corporation staff to threaten to withhold funds from PBS to achieve it, an act that would have required congressional approval.

Corporation officials declined to comment on Tomlinson's specific actions, but board chairwoman Cheryl Halpern called Konz's findings ''bracing" and pledged to swiftly institute changes. During a morning meeting at the organization's Washington headquarters, the board approved the creation of committees aimed at improving checks and balances.

Harrison said she was determined to repair ''a rip in trust" created by the furor over Tomlinson's actions.

WIBA sells name of its newsroom to a business
00:00 am 12/13/05
MELANIE CONKLIN [email protected]

It's been done with stadiums, pools and concert halls. Now, in an unusual move, Madison's WIBA radio station has sold the naming rights to its newsroom.

Beginning Jan. 1, the WIBA newsroom will be called the Amcore Bank News Center.

"This simply means they get 'name branding' with the description of the news center on air," confirmed Jeff Tyler, vice president of Clear Channel Radio-Madison, which owns WIBA-AM 1310 and FM 101.5. "What listeners will hear on air is something like, 'Now from the Amcore Bank News Center, here's WIBA's Jennifer Miller.'• "

This sounds suspiciously like a regressive trend, a return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when it was "the sponsor" who decided content on TV shows. Remember the 1950s? I'm old enough to recall the days when, if the Ford Motor Company sponsored, say, a detective show, you'd never see anybody driving anything except Fords, Mercuries and Lincolns, unless it was a criminal not allowed behind the wheel of a Ford. Fantastic. And this is a news room?

Merry Andrew wrote:

This sounds suspiciously like a regressive trend, a return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when it was "the sponsor" who decided content on TV shows. Remember the 1950s? I'm old enough to recall the days when, if the Ford Motor Company sponsored, say, a detective show, you'd never see anybody driving anything except Fords, Mercuries and Lincolns, unless it was a criminal not allowed behind the wheel of a Ford. Fantastic. And this is a news room?

Isn't it still that way? You can bet the products in these so called reality shows are placed there so that the cast can consume them with the label out. And other products that aren't sponsors tend to get their labels blurred out. You can bet that if Coke disagrees with the content of a show they will pull the sponsorship. And television/radio do dictate to a large degree the direction of our society. So it always has been ans always will be the big fat Republican millionaires that influence out society the most.

And do you thonk that any major news organisation would ever report anything bad about their biggest sponsor?

February 5, 2007
Bush Proposes Steep Cut to PBS Funding
By Ira Teinowitz
President Bush is reopening the fight over government support of public television, unveiling a 2007 government fiscal year budget that would cut federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by nearly 25 percent.

Did PBS bury controversial torture documentary under pressure from Bush administration?

Scott Horton reports today that PBS may have refused to nationally air a controversial documentary on the use of torture by the U.S. government in order to protect its funding. Previously, the Bush administration threatened to cut PBS’s funding after it aired Bush’s War, a Frontline special critical of the war in Iraq:

On Thursday evening WNET in New York will air an important new documentary by Emmy and Dupont Award winning producer Sherry Jones entitled “Torturing Democracy.” It appears on WNET and several other affiliates independently because PBS would not run the show. […]

According to producer Sherry Jones, PBS told her that “no time slot could be found for the documentary before January 21, 2009″ " the day after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leave office.

Watch a clip from Torturing Democracy here.

Did PBS bury controversial torture documentary under pressure from Bush administration?

Scott Horton reports today that PBS may have refused to nationally air a controversial documentary on the use of torture by the U.S. government in order to protect its funding. Previously, the Bush administration threatened to cut PBS’s funding after it aired Bush’s War, a Frontline special critical of the war in Iraq:

On Thursday evening WNET in New York will air an important new documentary by Emmy and Dupont Award winning producer Sherry Jones entitled “Torturing Democracy.” It appears on WNET and several other affiliates independently because PBS would not run the show. […]

According to producer Sherry Jones, PBS told her that “no time slot could be found for the documentary before January 21, 2009″ " the day after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leave office.

Watch a clip from Torturing Democracy here.

CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos
Waterboarding Got White House Nod

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2008; Page A01

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101403331.html?hpid=topnews