PBS president strikes against the right

Keep those fingers crossed. PBS has already weakened its hand by caving in to the right on some issues-- and failing to realize that appeasement isn't an option with these kooks. But now, in the wake of Bill Moyers' recent speech about the importance of a free press-- it looks like they might stop ceding ground.

From the AP story:

"WASHINGTON - The president of the Public Broadcasting Service on Tuesday rejected criticism by conservatives that public TV is guilty of liberal bias, and she offered a strong defense of PBS' Bill Moyers, a target of right-wing wrath.

"PBS does not belong to any one political party," Pat Mitchell said.

Mitchell's remarks at the National Press Club follow the disclosure that Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, hired a consultant to keep track of guests' political views on a program hosted by Moyers, who was White House press secretary during the Johnson administration.

"The facts do not support the case he makes" for political bias, Mitchell said of Tomlinson. Surveys show that the overwhelming majority of the public does not perceive bias in public broadcasting, she said."

Here's my take-- PBS needs to start doing this on a regular basis. After all, the CPB's own polls show that most Americans don't think of PBS as biased. And Tomlinson felt obliged to try two of them. When neither gave him the results he wanted, he chose to ignore them and try to reshape PBS' programming anyway. So the fine folks at PBS should start screaming bloody murder and make sure that this story gets coverage at a time when the fundamentalists are at their weakest and most out of favor with the public. It's a heck of a long time 'till the elections, but if these stories about religious takeovers keep up the effect could be lasting.