By Paul McLeary
At the end of outgoing PBS president Pat Mitchell’s speech yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, there was something of an awkward moment. The moderator of the event presented her with an NPC coffee mug and a framed citation honoring her appearance — stodgy and predictable enough — but there was a problem. The document, which Mitchell read aloud, referred to her as the president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and it said that the event took place on April 27.
While the media reporters in the crowd erupted in laughter (an event in itself) Mitchell quipped, “Was Tomlinson here on the 27th?”
Tomlinson, of course, is the CPB’s Republican chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, a man considered by many to be public broadcasting’s Public Enemy #1. Truth be told, he is likely a big reason why many attended the event in the first place, in the hope that Mitchell would roast the guy who has launched a concerted campaign to root out what he perceives as widespread “liberal bias” in public broadcasting.
Mitchell — who is due to step down in June 2006 — is no shrinking violet herself, having schooled for years at the elbow of the outspoken Ted Turner, her mentor at CNN. She has more than once publicly clashed with Tomlinson over his efforts to meddle in PBS’s programming decisions, and yesterday, while she demurred repeatedly when prodded by the audience to denounce him, she nevertheless flicked a few stinging jabs in his direction.
The substance of her speech focused on critics who say that PBS is no longer necessary now that the media landscape is dotted with 24-hour cable news channels and hundreds of niche channels. After mocking the softball documentaries and profit-motivated shows that clutter A&E and the History Channel, she said that public broadcasting’s main selling point is that it has the freedom to air long-form news shows and documentaries that rely only on quality, and not the bottom line. “In a media environment where everything’s for sale,” she said, “we need PBS….PBS is not a business, it’s a public service.”
But back to what was for lunch — namely, Tomlinson himself. Mitchell referred several times to public opinion polls taken to measure the popularity and the political balance of PBS’s programming. This was an obvious shot across Tomlinson’s bow; the poll numbers she referred to come from two reports commissioned — and then suppressed — by Tomlinson himself in order to prove his theory that public broadcasting has a liberal bias. The polls, originally conducted in 2002 and 2003, were only made public once they were leaked to the Center for Digital Democracy, which subsequently provided the data to CJR Daily and other news outlets.
Contrary to Tomlinson’s claims, the polls showed that, among other things, the “bias” charge is a dog that won’t hunt. Mitchell hammered this point home several times, saying “PBS does not belong to any particular constituency, no one political party…and public opinion polls verify it.” She’s right, of course. As we reported last month, the 2003 poll found that more than half surveyed felt that PBS’s news programming was more trustworthy than news shows on either ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and CNN. Some 55 percent said that PBS programming was “fair and balanced,” while a whopping 79 percent said the same about NPR.
Mitchell didn’t mention Tomlinson by name until the Q&A session that followed her presentation. She began by reminding the crowd that the CPB was originally formed in 1967 precisely to protect public broadcasting against “political influence” from government officials who might want to place their ideological stamp on the institution; a point that’s been largely lost in the current debate over Tomlinson’s efforts to provide “balance” to public broadcasting’s content.
Mitchell demurred from attacking Tomlinson personally or from judging “his motivations,” but she did assert that “the facts don’t support the case he makes,” and that the poll numbers commissioned by Tomlinson himself should put the whole debate to bed.
A few hours after the National Press Club luncheon, Bill Moyers gave a speech in the Rayburn Building for the inaugural edition of the “Future of American Media Caucus,” hosted by Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY). After giving a stirring speech urging reporters to respect “the truth,” no matter how uncomfortable, Moyers seconded many of Mitchell’s earlier comments. Declaring public broadcasting the country’s only “alternative to commercial culture which commodifies everything,” he lamented much contemporary journalism as little more than stenography.
Tomlinson again came up in the question session, but Moyers was less wary than Mitchell to criticize him. (Tomlinson had previously secretly hired a watchdog to monitor Moyers’ “Now” newsmagazine for liberal bias, claiming there is a “widespread perception among politically sophisticated people” that the network — and Moyers in particular — slants to the left.)
Moyers called Tomlinson’s comments “wrong” and “unseemly.” Aside from the personal attack on Moyers himself, he said that his greatest concern was that the criticism “might cause my colleagues in public broadcasting to engage in ‘anticipatory capitulation'” the next time they find themselves about to broadcast something Tomlinson might not personally approve of.
There is a tendency on the part of critics in today’s charged partisan atmosphere to find bogeymen on the other side under every media bed. (Indeed, Moyers noted that “All politics [today] is media politics.”) Tomlinson is taking advantage of that heated atmosphere to try to tear down what decades of public broadcasting has forged — an intelligent, non-partisan and experimental form of broadcasting that’s cheap at the price. (Each American taxpayer pays $1 a year to fund its programming.)
As Pat Mitchell noted, polls show that Americans name PBS their “most trusted” source of news. PBS is accessible by 99 percent of Americans and currently reaches 70 percent of American homes — making it the true “electronic public square” that it’s founders had envisioned. But not since Richard Nixon tried to shutter PBS in the early 1970s has public broadcasting been in so much danger of failing to live up to its mandate to be a free, educational, and apolitical source of news and entertainment for Americans. Judging by the questions people asked of Mitchell and Moyers yesterday, it appears that Tomlinson’s power play may be short lived, as the public is both engaged in the debate, and angry at his partisan maneuverings to try and skew the programming to the right.
Either way, it’s dismaying that Mitchell is leaving PBS, but if her tough comments are any indication, it’s also encouraging that she’s staying for one more year.
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.