Media Research Center CyberAlert Special

No Fairness Doctrine for PBS
How Taxpayer-Funded Broadcasting Is "Surging" Left Under Democrats

The Democratic takeover of Congress in 2007 quickly made one
definitive change in the national media infrastructure. For the first
time since Newt Gingrich became speaker in 1995, America's public
broadcasting system didn't have a skeptical majority party that might
sporadically ask questions about PBS using the taxpayer-funded
airwaves for overt liberal activism. In previous years with
Democratic control of Congress, PBS has played a more activist role
within the media, dragging the rest of the national media further to
the left and spurring more aggression and ill will against
conservative and Republican leaders. Just as 2007 has been a year for
a "surge" of troops in Iraq, it's also been a year of "surging"
activism within PBS.

At the same time, Democratic congressional leaders now in the
majority have been entertaining the idea of reviving a federal
"Fairness Doctrine" which would require private broadcasters to
comply with notions of balancing out each station's daily schedule of
news, talk, and public-affairs programming. These same Democrats have
been highly offended at the idea that anyone outside or inside
taxpayer-funded broadcasting would monitor PBS content for fairness
or balance.

Despite taking federal money from all taxpayers, PBS stations across
America often air programs and documentaries that tilt decidedly to
the left. In funding filmmakers to go out and make one-sided left-
wing films and talk programs, public broadcasting subsidies serve, in
effect, as ideological pork-barrel spending. While conservatives like
Frank Gaffney have seen their films stripped from the national PBS
schedule due to his activist "day job," liberal activism is not
eschewed at PBS, but encouraged. In this analysis, the Media Research
Center outlines three trends that herald an increasing misuse of
public television against American conservatives:

# Bill Moyers and His Impeach-Bush Bandwagon. Partisanship was
redefined as statesmanship when the latest reincarnation of the PBS
program Bill Moyers Journal devoted an hour of supportive air time on
July 13 to two guests who agreed that President Bush and Vice
President Cheney urgently need to be impeached. Even PBS Ombudsman
Michael Getler found the show wasn't remotely balanced in its zeal to
abort the Bush presidency, reporting "there was almost a complete
absence of balance."

# Tavis Smiley Campaigns Against the GOP. PBS authorized Tavis
Smiley, who hosts a nightly natonal talk show out of Los Angeles PBS
station KCET, to organize two presidential debates at black colleges
in 2007. The Democratic debate in June was overtly friendly and
barely made a national ripple. But in September, Smiley grew furious
when four Republican front-runners decided to skip the GOP debate
right before the third-quarter campaign fundraising deadline at the
end of the month. He skewered the candidates before, after, and
during the debate on PBS, and also took his anti-GOP outrage to other
TV networks. On his PBS show, he asked if the no-show Republican
candidates "will pay" and suggested the empty podiums he set up to
dramatize their absence will be props in Democratic campaign ads in 2008.

# The "Independent" Television Service. ITVS, a left-wing filmmakers'
collective with its headquarters located in Nancy Pelosi's San
Francisco district, draws about $15 million a year from the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting to make films supporting their
statement of values that "a civilized society seeks economic and
social justice." Taxpayers have funded a long list of films knocking
the Bush administration's policies, celebrating leftist agitators,
and promoting "progressive" sexual politics. Nurturing a new
generation of liberal filmmakers, and not conservative filmmakers, is
the mission of ITVS.

The report concludes with some simple recommendations for public
broadcasting executives. Since public television is supported by
taxpayers of all political stripes, the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting ought to live up to its mandate to monitor content for
objectivity and fairness. Calling for impeachment of Republican
presidents with one-sided panels doesn't help make PBS look fair. If
public broadcasters want to moderate presidential debates, its
moderators ought to display fairness and balance toward both
political parties. If the system funds liberal filmmakers, it ought
to fund conservative filmmakers as well, and not just serve as a
political organizing tool for one side. The nation's PBS stations
should reflect the diversity of its whole audience.

END of Executive Summary of the Special Report