politics

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

November 1, 2005

It’s been a while since we last checked in with our friends over at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but today’s closed-door board of directors meeting gives us a chance to give you a little update.

It’s widely expected that the Corporation’s Inspector General Kenneth Konz will deliver his long-anticipated report on “deficiencies in policies and procedures” at the CPB meeting today, although the contents of his investigation aren’t likely to be made public for a couple of weeks. Konz has been working on his report for some time, initially acting on a request made in May by several members of Congress to explore whether CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson violated the Public Broadcasting Act by secretly hiring outside contractors to search for evidence of “liberal bias” in PBS’ programs, and by bringing aboard a White House staffer to help write rules for two new ombudsmen to monitor public broadcasting’s content.

As the Free Press has reported, that’s not all that’s up over at the CPB. Since her appointment in June, CPB president Patricia de Stacy Harrison, late of the State Department and the Republican National Committee, has been busily poaching former colleagues from the State Department’s Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy division to staff her office.

Three of the new hires have experience with the press — but not the kind of experience that makes us especially comfortable when it comes to the public airwaves. According to the Free Press, one of those new hires is Tim Isgitt, who was brought on as vice president for government affairs at CPB. Isgitt is one of the principle architects of the “Shared Values” campaign, “which placed pro-American propaganda in Arabic media worldwide in an effort to win Arab support for the war against terrorism,” as the Free Press puts it. “Under Isgitt’s direction, the State Department produced propaganda videos, broadcast ads, pamphlets, booklets and other materials intended for distribution in more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries. Several Arab nations refused to run the TV ads, which U.S. media widely ridiculed for attempting to package U.S. policy as a commercial ‘brand.'”

Second is Mike Levy, now the CPB’s vice president for communications and the organization’s corporate spokesman. At the State Department, Levy “developed and executed ‘pro-active media strategies’ to increase support for U.S. counter-narcotics initiatives … this work included helping the administration put a ‘positive spin’ on U.S. drug eradication efforts in Afghanistan, where heroin production has tripled following U.S. military intervention in the region.”

Finally there is Helen Mobley, now senior director for corporate communications and planning at CPB. At State, Mobley worked with Harrison to “manage the State Department’s efforts to showcase new freedoms after the downfall of the Taliban regime by bringing Afghan women to America. On one such visit Mobley was accused of ‘heavy-handed muzzling’ of the press after reporters attempted to question a visiting delegation of 14 Afghan women. Mobley cut off all efforts to interview the Afghan women and grilled a photographer who had been taking photos of the event … She has been active in GOPUSA.com, Bobby Eberle’s Texas-based campaign ‘to spread the conservative message throughout America.'”

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So while the CPB is supposed to be a private, non-political institution, it looks more and more like a parking lot for partisan bureaucrats. Konz should make public his report on his investigation sooner, rather than later – after all, Americans deserve to know who and what their tax dollars are being spent on, particularly when it comes to the public airwaves.

–Paul McLeary

Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.