In quoting baseball and malaprop Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, Day was referring to recent reports about the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting investigating public broadcasting for political "balance."

"It happened in the Nixon years particularly," says Day, who helped found San Francisco's public television station, KQED, in 1953.

"When Nixon finally appointed the majority on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board, it in effect began to take over programming, even though it was not supposed to do that," he says.

"A number of series were canceled, including, ironically, Bill Moyers' Journal," Day recalls.

The irony is that Bill Moyers is making a return visit to center stage in the current controversy. Much of the dispute comes from CPB Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson's investigation into the "balance" of views presented on Moyers' show Now, which he left last year.

In 2003, Tomlinson -- saying he had received a complaint about bias from a friend whose foundation makes contributions to PBS -- contracted with a consultant to monitor Now.

More recently, he called for monitoring of National Public Radio's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, apparently concerned that the Israeli government's position is not adequately represented.

Tomlinson's CPB also provided initial funding for two PBS shows with a conservative bent -- one from Paul Gigot, editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, the other from former CNN contributor Tucker Carlson.

PBS President Pat Mitchell has defended these additions, saying that they help make PBS the nation's "town square."

Critics of these Tomlinson-backed programs note that one of CPB's missions is to give a forum to voices that otherwise would not be heard. They question how the Wall Street Journal and Carlson meet this criterion.

Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy says that there is really another agenda: "There is tremendous pressure from Tomlinson and his colleagues ... because they do not want to see serious news and public affairs programming. This dovetails with the views of many local station managers, including powerful ones. They say that the public doesn't want news, it doesn't pledge to news, that we should give them light entertainment fare."

Day and others see Tomlinson's moves as another chapter in the long book of conservative politicians trying to control -- or abolish -- what they perceive as the liberal public airwaves. There is some irony in CPB being the instrument of this, as it was created specifically to insulate the public airwaves from political pressure.

That was in 1967 when, following the recommendations of a Carnegie Commission study, Congress passed legislation that set up the public broadcasting infrastructure.

"The concern is that Tomlinson really violated the letter and spirit of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 by enforcing the Bush administration concerns and stifling dissident views and positions on PBS," says Robert McChesney, professor of communication at the University of Illinois. "He is limiting his stated concern about fairness and balance to one program."

Many say the current problems are because Congress did not follow the Carnegie Commission completely. There is no endowed trust to fund programming; instead money is handed out annually by CPB. All appointments to the CPB board were put in the hands of the president, though with political party limitations. In addition to its insulating responsibilities, CPB was charged with ensuring that programming is "objective and balanced."

"There is no such thing as real objectivity," Day says. "And balance is such a relative term. It depends, as any grammar school student can tell you, on where you put the fulcrum."

Tom McCourt, assistant professor of communication studies at Fordham University, agrees: "The content analyses of programs on PBS that I've read indicate the representation of the conservative viewpoint far exceeds the of traditional liberal programming.

"That's because there is so much business-oriented programming. There are no ongoing programs for labor unions or anything like that," he says. "I think that these accusations of bias are really misleading."

McCourt says to understand the current controversy, one needs to understand that "the creation of public broadcasting happened as a specific historical moment. It is very much a Great Society program.

"It was when the government was taking an active interest in quality-of-life issues," he says. "I really don't think the public broadcasting system would be created today."

The problem, McCourt says, is that "the free-market types think that the government really has no business being in these matters."

So, over the years, public broadcasting faced attacks from the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Newt Gingrich called for ending its funding when he was speaker of the House.

Though the money handed out by the CPB accounts for only about 17 percent of PBS' budget, it is crucial because it is the seed money that helps new programs get off the ground, giving them the leverage to raise more funds. Where those seeds are sown goes a long way to determining the future crop that shows up on the air.

The effect on National Public Radio is a bit different. NPR itself, in part because of a $400 million legacy left by McDonald's heir Joan Kroc, is fairly immune from any tugging on the financial strings. But its member stations use CPB funds to buy NPR programs. Tomlinson has recently suggested that they use the money to buy more classical music shows.

© 2005 Baltimore Sun

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