'Inspector Tomlinson' Pulls Secret Raid on CPB Coffers to Hire Republican Operatives

Alexander Chee at Fictioneer and Progressive Blog Digest pointed yesterday to developments in the continuing struggle at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that threaten to finally show the true depths of Kenneth Tomlinson’s political agenda there.

Tomlinson, you may remember, is the Chairman of CPB’s Board and lately the henchman of an attempt to engineer a Republican takeover of public television. He’s become known within public broadcasting circles for his attacks on Bill Moyers' former stewardship of a weekly news magazine program as being too liberal and for engineering the startup of a weekly show featuring the far right editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Tomlinson was responsible for the removal of former CPB President Kathleen Cox, a career public television staffer and now proposes a former RNC co-chair, Patricia Harrison, to head CPB’s staff.

Tomlinson has been known for his surreptitious monitoring of the politics of various PBS news program guests and has clearly outlined an agenda to pull PBS and NPR into line with his politics. Tomlinson’s tenure has prompted an exodus of staffers with whom he disagrees and has sent a chill throughout the world of public television. Content providers now look over their shoulders in the edit room for the possible opprobrium of the CPB Chairman, should their programming offend Tomlinson.

Now it seems Tomlinson has actually used CPB money to hire Republican lobbyists, without the knowledge of the Board of Directors, to keep a watchful eye on Senator Conrad Burns, who had the gall to propose an amendment that would give public television stations more representation on CPB’s Board. One of those lobbyists, Brian Darling, may ring a bell with readers as the author of the infamous Mel Martinez memo outlining the ways that Republican legislators could exploit the life and death of Teri Schiavo to their partisan advantage.

Perhaps Tomlinson should be returned to the world of propaganda, where he thrived as the head of the Voice of America. He appears not to have distinguished any difference between promoting American interests abroad through broadcasting and promoting the Administration’s political agenda in the US via the public airwaves.

Comments

[Garnet]

Touche for the last paragraph!