Well, it seems that even PBS isn't safe anymore...safe that is from the
ever reaching grasp of the Right on a mission. Sadly the old culturally rich PBS is losing the battle for freedom of expression. And it comes as no surprise that the Conservatives are behind its decline.The president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Pat Mitchell, has stepped down and the new head of the CPB, Ken Ferree, is a staunch Republican proponent of media deregulation and a former top adviser to FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Three top CPB officials, all with Democratic affiliations, departed or were dismissed in recent months. The CPB has ordered a comprehensive review of public TV and radio programming for "evidence of bias"---A low point in it's 38-year history. Imagine, conservatives complaining of bias. As a condition for funding, the CPB even tried to require that all new PBS funding agreements contain "objectivity and balance" requirements for each of its programs. Thankfully, for the time being, this effort failed.
But bad signs are in the air. Once considered a good source for image advertising, corporations have been steadily cutting back underwriting financing for PBS programming. And PBS has had much difficulty receiving government funding with conservatives in Washington reluctant to approve programming that doesn't gel with their beliefs.
A recent incident illustrates the CPB's sad decline: The show, "Postcards from Buster" features a cartoon rabbit named Buster. In a recent episode, entitled "Sugartime", Buster travels to Vermont to learn about maple sugar farming. While there, he visits two lesbian couples who also happen to be parents.
This cartoon episode, it appears, set our Department of Education to seeing red. Republican Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings castigated the episode, saying that parents wouldn't want children exposed to that kind of lifestyle (speaking for all of us, as usual). As a result, PBS decided not to release the episode to its member stations.
Bus Spellings wasn't finished. She then issued three requests to PBS regarding the episode, according to cnn.com. She demanded the following: any Department of Education seal or any statements linking it to the show should be removed, the notification of all member stations to the subject matter of the show so that those individual stations could review it before airing it, and the refund of all moneys paid to PBS by the Department of Education that had been spent on the episode. In the spirit of the times, of course all of this happened. Because PBS relys mostly on government funding, it had little choice.
Well now, maybe it's just us, but It could be said that tolerance has taken a big step backwards when the government bans an innocent cartoon episode that has the audacity to illustrate this country's diversity Excuse us, but believe it or not, there are lesbian mothers out there. Are they supposed to feel like outcasts in there own country?
Fortunately, a few PBS stations did choose to air the "Sugartime!" episode. The Boston station WGBH, which produces the show, aired it on Feb. 2 along with a handful of other PBS markets, according to salon.com. The Seattle station KCTS also aired the show on Feb. 11, according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
And this has not been the only conservative influence on PBS lately.
Of course the popular NOW series with Bill Moyers had been a frequent target of Conservatives and the show was slashed in half after Moyers' departure. PBS has also added the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Tucker Carlson "Unfiltered" to the programming. This line-up proves just how far right PBS has moved in an attempt to appear fair and balanced. Moyers complained to the New Yorker last year, "This is the first time in my thirty-two years in public broadcasting that CPB has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons."
With money and politics ruling the media, PBS was seemingly one of the last untouched frontiers. We grew up watching children's programs while our parents introduced us to PBS' news, documentary, science fiction, British comedy, mystery and theatre shows. We grew up watching, if not found anywhere else, diverse faces like ouselves so that we knew we were not the only ones outside our neighborhoods. And while some of this will certainly, in all likelihood, remain, the conservative influence seems to be stifling the creative freedom that has always been a PBS hallmark.
This is the saddest state of all. The CPB was created to shield PBS from political pressure and, in turn, PBS was intended to address the underserved.
And in today's climate can anyone really argue that the Conservative agenda is underserved?
Some Facts:
A majority of the CPB's eight-member board--chaired by Ken Tomlinson, a good friend of Karl Rove--are now Republican appointees. Two of the newest, Gay Hart Gaines and Cheryl Halpern, have donated more than $800,000 to the Republican Party since 1995. Gaines once ran a political action committee for Newt Gingrich, who as speaker of the House pushed to "zero out" all of PBS's federal funding. In 2003, PBS President Pat Mitchell offered Gingrich a town-hall style show. It would've happened if Gingrich wasn't already under contract with Fox News.
--source: The Nation
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