The Tainted Record in Public "Non-Commercial" Spaces
Today in the mainstream there are no safe havens. All major print publications are corporate owned or controlled as are the on-air media including the two main supposed "non-commercial" alternatives established as independent, non-governmental, commercial-free public spaces now as much under the control of the interests of wealth and power as the media giants. Today so-called National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting (PBS) are beholden to the interests of capital because that's where so much of their funding comes from.
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was founded by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to provide a programming diversity alternative to the commercial broadcasters, began operating in October, 1970 and was required to follow a "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature." At the time, it was stipulated the federal government was prohibited from influencing its programming content, but that was controversial from the start as PBS operated with federal funding making it a target whenever it took on an issue critical of the mouth that was feeding it.
Today corporate donors make up a substantial proportion of PBS funding and with it claim and get the right to decide what programming is run and what it may contain along with Republican allies in the administration and Congress who have plenty to say and put their man, Kenneth Tomlinson, in charge of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to see they got it when George Bush appointed him as chairman of the CPB for a two-year term beginning in September, 2003 after he was earlier appointed to its board by Bill Clinton and confirmed in September, 2000.
This was a clear case of putting the fox in charge of the hen house forcing even the administration-friendly New York Times to report a front-page story in May, 2005 that evidence was mounting that Tomlinson pressured PBS officials to produce more conservative programming and purge shows considered more liberal. It prompted an unnamed senior FCC official to tell the Washington Post the CPB chairman "is engaged in a systematic effort not just to sanitize the truth, but to impose a right wing agenda on PBS....almost like a right wing coup." In other words, to make sure the ideology in PBS programming was no different than the way the commercial giants see things.
This should have come as no surprise with someone like Tomlinson in charge. He had a conflict of interest based on his prior employment where he was director of US propaganda for Voice of America (VOA) from 1982 - 84, was then appointed to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), served as its chairman and in that capacity oversaw most government propaganda broadcasts to foreign countries including by VOA, Radio Free Europe, the Arab language Alhurra and Radio Marti beamed into Cuba that combined reaches 100 million people worldwide.
He was also ethically tainted at the time according to a State Department inspector general report for having "used his office to run a horse-racing operation and had improperly put a friend on the payroll" and without board approval signed off on $245,000 of invoices for questionable purposes. He never should have been put on the CPB board or gotten the top job there and now no longer does after being forced to resign in November, 2005 for trying to politicize the agency with his hard line tactics and unethical practices - something that's become standard practice on Capitol Hill under Republican control.
Sadly, things haven't improved as one Republican ideologue replaced another with the Bush appointment of Cheryl Halpern to be CPB chairperson. And on November 14, 2006, the Tomlinson record was no obstacle preventing George Bush from renominating him as chairman of the BBG for a term to run until August 13, 2007 despite his nomination having been stalled in the Senate because of allegations of misconduct. So far, no charges have been brought against Mr. Tomlinson, and it's doubtful they will be when the 110th Democrat-controlled Congress takes over in January. On Capitol Hill, the climate and culture of corruption is bipartisan, long-standing, and it doesn't take long for the new party in power to engage in the same kinds of unethical practices that drove out the former one. It just takes a while for them to get caught at it.
The situation is no better at National Public Radio (NPR) that long ago abandoned the public trust it was sworn to uphold when it was founded in 1970 as in independent, private, non-profit member organization of public radio stations in the country. It's as tainted and corrupted as its television counterpart and now also gets a substantial proportion of its funding from corporate donors demanding influence, like the kind a $225 million behest can buy. That's the amount gotten from the estate of the late Joan Kroc, widow of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's Corporation that never needs to worry about an unfriendly report on NPR's airwaves no matter how egregious its behavior, and there's plenty of it to reveal that stays suppressed in all the major media including on NPR, the "peoples' radio."
Despite its mandate to be unbiased and serve the public interest, NPR steers clear of that in its one-sided kind of "journalism." It's careful to shy away from all controversial topics that may be sensitive to corporate interests that include those providing it funding support or might wish to like Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto and Walmart that already do. It's also "respectful" of whichever party is in power with Republican administrations getting special deference as they were from 1994 until the Democrats took control of the Congress in the November, 2006 mid-term elections. Even George Bush's most extreme transgressions can't get NPR's ire up enough to report accurately on them.
That's made even clearer when it's known what kind of man it has in charge - current president and CEO Kevin Klose. Like the CPB during the Tomlinson tenure, so too is NPR run by a man who used to be the director of all major worldwide US government propaganda dissemination broadcast media including VOA, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti. And like Tomlinson, it made him an ideal choice for a comparable job at NPR, the "peoples' radio," that like the "peoples' television" and its flagship Lehrer News Hour, never met a US-instigated war it didn't love, support and report endless supportive propaganda about while suppressing all news unfriendly to the US empire and its business interests.
So far as its known, however, Mr. Klose hasn't been accused of the kinds of activities attributed to his former CPB counterpart, staying free from the taint that forced Mr. Tomlinson to resign. That aside, it's had no positive impact on NPR's programming that's just as committed as PBS to serving the interests of wealth and power feeding it while ignoring the public trust despite the considerable funding it gets from that source from frequent on-air fund-raising efforts it has no right or justification asking for.
