Reaching out or caving in?
New shows spur charges that PBS is trying to appease conservative critics in Congress
Tucker Carlson and Paul Gigot are more than just new PBS hosts. They are central figures in an ideological war. "I've been accused of being an instrument in some conspiracy," says Carlson, one of CNN's "Crossfire" conservatives, who anchors a new public-affairs show on PBS.
"I don't want to be anybody's tool for balancing something," adds Gigot, the editor of The Wall Street Journal's famously conservative editorial page, whose PBS show debuts next month.
Public television -- home of Big Bird, "
The evidence, they say, is in a series of ominous lineup changes. In are conservatives such as Tucker and Gigot and possibly cultural commentator Michael Medved. Out is liberal icon Bill Moyers, who is retiring from "Now With Bill Moyers" after the election, although the program will continue in a shorter format.
"I definitely think that PBS is trying to appease conservative critics in Congress," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, who calls PBS president Pat Mitchell "the captain of the noncommercial Titanic. Instead of throwing people overboard, she's grabbing conservatives on board."
Public broadcasting executives studiously avoid using the words "liberal" or "conservative." But they acknowledge an interest in "diversity."
"We didn't look for anybody with a political point of view. We were looking for good television people," says Coby Atlas, PBS senior vice president for programming. "Our mission is about diversity of ideas." Asked whether the new conservative hosts represent an effort to level the ideological playing field, WGBH-TV (Channel 2) president Henry Becton says, "I think there's some rebalancing going on." (This reporter appears on WGBH as a paid panelist.)
For much of the 1990s, public television was a prime target for conservatives angry about what they saw as a left-wing tilt. The 1992 Republican Party platform went so far as to condemn "blatant political bias of the government-sponsored radio and television networks." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich threatened to strip public TV of its government funding. A 1999 scandal, in which a number of PBS stations were found to have shared donor lists with Democratic organizations, restoked the fires of Republican outrage.
Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative watchdog Media Research Center, says his group has traditionally focused its criticism on shows like "Frontline" and "P.O.V." as well as "anything Moyers is doing."
"You don't balance out 30 years of liberal bias with 30 minutes of Tucker Carlson," Graham says. "That doesn't balance the game."
"Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered," which debuted in June, is the result of PBS's desire for more public-affairs programming in the post-9/11 universe, says Atlas. The bow-tied host -- the son of former Corporation for Public Broadcasting president Richard Carlson -- is a far cry from his fiery "Crossfire" partisan on "Unfiltered," which features discussion, commentary, and interviews with guests across the political and cultural spectrum. A recent "Unfiltered" program, for example, dealt with obesity in America.
"I don't want partisanship to muddy [the show]," Carlson says. "The one thing I want our show to be is open-minded." So far, the show hasn't been particularly popular, generating an average national rating of 0.7, which translates to about 950,000 viewers.
Gigot, a former PBS "NewsHour" contributor, will host "Journal Editorial Report" beginning next month. He will focus on topical issues with the help of other staffers from The Wall Street Journal's editorial page -- which in the past has opined that Congress should "cut off the public tap, freeing Barney, Big Bird and the other wonderful PBS creations to find a profitable niche on cable. . . ."
Asked about those sentiments now that his show is funded with public money, Gigot says: "They called us up. It wasn't as if we were saying, `How could we grab a federal subsidy?' We're putting up an emormous amount of resources in terms of staff time and energy. I don't think this is a free lunch."
Nevertheless, the idea of the Journal editorial page -- with its "free markets" mantra -- receiving some public television bounty did not go unnoticed. "What a delicious irony," says Steve Bass, president of public television station NPT in Nashville.
The status of the program featuring Medved -- a film critic, radio talk master, and former "Sneak Previews" host on PBS -- is murkier. The concept, which began with a pilot featuring a debate between the conservative Medved and the liberal actress Janeane Garofalo, is being rejiggered. For one thing, the show -- which will focus on "the cross-pollination between art, media, and our society" -- is still looking for a cohost for Medved, according to Dalton Delan, chief programming officer of presenting station WETA in Washington, D.C. Some public TV officials interviewed for this story thought the program had been shelved. But WETA hopes to roll it out in the spring, with the likelihood of funding from the CPB.
The CPB, a nonprofit organization created and funded by Congress, provides about 20 percent of PBS's programming budget. It has earmarked money for the Carlson and Gigot shows and is interested in funding the Medved project. It has also launched an ambitious $20 million "America at a Crossroads" initiative designed to develop about 20 films for airing during the 2005-06 season on the broad subject of what a press release described as "America's post-9/11 challenges and opportunities."
At this point, no one knows what the "Crossroads" project will produce. But critics worry that the CPB is exerting political pressure on public television content. The advocacy group Common Cause has raised concerns about the qualifications of two Bush administration appointees to the CPB board who have been major Republican contributors. (For his part, Chester accuses both parties of using the CPB board as a "political dumping ground.")
"We don't think public broadcasting ought to be influenced by any agenda," says Common Cause vice president for advocacy Celia Wexler. "What we are concerned about is whether [Carlson and Gigot's shows] are the result of the CPB board screaming and hollering about `you're too liberal.' "
Michael Pack, a former independent filmmaker who is now the CPB's senior vice president for television programming, is considered a conservative in public TV circles. Asked how he feels about being in the middle of an ideological storm over PBS, Pack says, "If you're going to make public-affairs shows, that's what happens. I think we as a system have shied away from controversy."
Pack makes no bones about what he sees as the need to shake up the menu. "One thing I feel strongly is public television needs to bring in new people, new life," he says. "CPB and I personally have been committed to having a diversity of viewpoints on the air. You need a range of points of view in order to have the public informed."
But not everyone in the PBS family is sure that a spate of new public-affairs shows with hosts who bring ideological "diversity" is a sound strategy.
"What's happening is we're spawning other programs, maybe to deal with the perception of a lack of balance in one or two shows," says Bass of NPT. "As a matter of running a station, I don't know how much time I have for these shows."
PBS's ideological critics on the left and right don't agree on much. But they do suspect a link between politics and programming. Says Jim Naureckas, an official at the liberal watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: "They are, to a large extent, a business, and they understand where their money's coming from -- it's a Republican-controlled Congress."
The Media Research Center's Graham predicts that the new shows with right-leaning hosts will fail.
"Nobody at the network is conservative, and no one wants them to survive," he says. "These shows are done to curry favor with congressional appropriators."
