[IP] The Real Attack on Public Broadcasting
Begin forwarded message:
From: Tim O'Reilly <tim@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 26, 2005 11:37:02 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: The Real Attack on Public Broadcasting
IPers might find Frank Rich's latest NYT editorial quite interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/opinion/26rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
(or use http://xrl.us/gjer if that url gets munged.)
Entitled The Armstrong Williams News Hour, the piece begins:
"HERE'S the difference between this year's battle over public
broadcasting and the one that blew up in Newt Gingrich's face a
decade ago: this one isn't really about the survival of public
broadcasting. So don't be distracted by any premature obituaries
for Big Bird. Far from being an endangered species, he's the
ornithological equivalent of a red herring....this time the game is
far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS
and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and
public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine
that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at
taxpayers' expense. If you liked the fake government news videos
that ended up on local stations - or thrilled to the "journalism"
of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid
to promote administration policies - you'll love the brave new
world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio.
There's only one obstacle standing in the way of the coup. Like
Richard Nixon, another president who tried to subvert public
broadcasting in his war to silence critical news media, our current
president may be letting hubris get the best of him. His minions
are giving any investigative reporters left in Washington a fresh
incentive to follow the money.
That money is not the $100 million that the House still threatens
to hack out of public broadcasting's various budgets. Like the
theoretical demise of Big Bird, this funding tug-of-war is a smoke
screen that deflects attention from the real story. Look instead at
the seemingly paltry $14,170 that, as Stephen Labaton of The New
York Times reported on June 16, found its way to a mysterious
recipient in Indiana named Fred Mann. Mr. Labaton learned that in
2004 Kenneth Tomlinson, the Karl Rove pal who is chairman of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, clandestinely paid this sum to
Mr. Mann to monitor his PBS bête noire, Bill Moyers's "Now."...
The piece focuses on the "money trail" that shows how the right wing
is working to take over PBS, as part of a broader strategy of
controlling media critical of the Bush administration. Scary stuff.
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Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly Media, Inc.
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http://www.oreilly.com (company), http://tim.oreilly.com (personal)
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