Ken Auletta, a media critic, has a piece in this week's New Yorker entitled, 'Big Bird Flies Right.' It seems that the Bushies may be using their power over government funding to push PBS and NPR to the right. In today's Daily Progress Report from The Center for American Progress, they use the upcoming programs hosted by Tucker Carlson(a conservative formerly of CNN's Crossfire) and Paul Gigot(the conservative editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page) as evidence for this supposed right- leaning shift. Neither of these shows are on the air yet, so I am reticent to judge the content of their programs.
However, as an avid viewer/listener and supporter of my local PBS and NPR stations, I have been happy with the current programming. As far as I'm concerned, you can't get better news than The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. And don't even get me started on NPR's prgramming. I am sure I would listen all day if I didn't have other things to do.
I have to say, having watched and listened to our government supported(and largely viewer supported) stations as often as I have this past year, this whole accusation is as much a product of paranoia as the supposed 'liberal media bias.'
This from today's Progress Report:
"A report by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) shows among partisan sources interviewed on or reporting for NPR, 'Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent).' In addition, during the month surveyed, "individual Republicans were NPR's most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance."
So what if the Republicans got more air time on NPR? Maybe it is because they had a lot of explaning to do during FAIR's month long review period. Maybe, those numbers from the study wouldn't seem so damning if they were put in context.
As for the New Yorker piece and the future of PBS/NPR, well, I guess we'll have to wait and see. It certainly is believable that thet Bushies would manipulate public funds to push a radically right leaning agenda. Still, I am not convinced that they will be in office long enough to have a serious impact. So, let's just say I am not ready to panic just because PBS hired a couple of conservatives to host their own shows. I think that is a getting a little too twitchy with your panic button.
Posted by Paul Hina at June 5, 2004 12:23 AM