Putting the BS into PBS

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of PBS, has initiated a project designed to ferret out liberal "bias" at PBS. One wonders why he would bother. According to conservative propagandists, PBS now functions as the counterweight to the admitted far-right bias of cable news.

Trouble is, the conservative propagandists are wrong. Both PBS and and National Public Radio have pushed a center-right agenda for years, if not decades. Of course, conservatives have redefined political reality in such a way that any centrist position is now considered godless Bolshevism.

Tomlinson has now been caught in a lie. Contrary to his claims, he was vetting material with a White House aide, Mary C. Andrews, who was then hired (no doubt at a cushy salary) to act as an "ombudsman" at PBS. Translation: She's being paid to define expressible opinion. Any time the writer of a new book cautiously expresses a view at odds with the Administration, lovely Mary will insure that PBS becomes yet another vehicle for Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and their band of bloodthirsty loons.

You want to know how the Kenny and Mary star chamber will define "liberalism"? Dig this:

In a little-noticed speech on the floor of the Senate this week, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, said that in response to his request for the reports on the "Now" program, Mr. Tomlinson provided him with the raw data from reports.

Mr. Dorgan said that Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, was classified in the data as a "liberal" for an appearance on a segment of a show that questioned the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq.

Hagel is, by any rational standard, a conservative. He was also the chairman of vote-count firm ES&S. Of course, only wacky conspiracy theorists would ever believe that he owed his "stunning upset victory" to the fact that his company counted the ballots.

Yet Kenny and Mary classify Hagel as a liberal.

Another segment about financial waste at the Pentagon was classified as "anti-Defense," Mr. Dorgan said.

So let's get this straight: In order to be considered "pro-Defense" one has to embrace financial waste at the Pentagon?

Nobody who now willingly donates to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will continue to offer pledges if, when, that institution turns into yet another Coulterism Delivery Vehicle. And so it will die. And it will deserve to die.