The assault on NPR

WHEN GOVERNMENT media masters ask broadcasters to replace news with music, watch out. That was the Kremlin's way on bad days in Soviet-era Moscow. Days when someone important had died. Days when things had gone badly wrong.

Now, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson, is ushering in an era when National Public Radio member stations may, reportedly, soon be encouraged by the corporation to shift their programming from news to music.

News has made NPR America's great radio success story of the last 20 years. While commercial radio has cut news, gone Top 40, and stumbled, NPR's listenership has soared. It now tops 23 million a week, its largest audience in history.

Tomlinson says he is concerned with a perception of liberal bias in public broadcasting. He has singled out Bill Moyers at PBS for criticism, even as Moyers has departed and PBS has -- at the direction of the corporation -- brought on the conservative Tucker Carlson and editors of The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page. Last month, despite objections from NPR, which already had an active ombudsman, the corporation appointed its own ombudsmen -- one right leaning and one left -- to monitor public broadcasting content for political slant. This is almost certain to raise partisan tensions and tempt more intervention.

It is time to step off this path. America's public broadcasting system was born with bipartisan support under a Democratic president, Lyndon Baines Johnson. It has grown under administrations of both parties. Now the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board is dominated by appointees of a Republican, George W. Bush.

But NPR's listeners self-identify themselves across the American political spectrum -- one-third conservative, one-third liberal, and one-third independent. Repeated surveys ordered up by Tomlinson himself have found that large majorities of listeners do not hear liberal bias at NPR. For its latest survey the corporation commissioned two polling firms, one Republican and one Democrat. They found that fewer than 15 percent of Americans say that NPR coverage of the war or the Bush administration is slanted. And 80 percent of Americans say they have an overall favorable impression of NPR. Those are pretty darned good numbers. And, yet, the swords are drawn in Washington. How do we move beyond this?

First, to NPR: Don't retreat. Do reach out. Don't shrink back. Be more bold. Don't rest on those poll numbers. Know that this whole country, with all the people in it, is your ideal audience. The whole population -- red states, blue states, everybody. So speak to all. Listen to all. Test every assertion and premise. And be journalistically critical of all. Not in a desperate balancing act between parties and competing agendas. The goal is not to balance two spins. But listen and dig for honesty, for the understanding and insight the whole country needs. Does that sound difficult in this divided time? Yes, but that's the job.

Second, to Kenneth Tomlinson: Don't build walls. Don't drive wedges. Don't divide. Think big and long-term. The one barrier the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has historically tended is a firewall between public broadcasting's news-gathering mission and meddling politics. That is important for the continuing health of any news organization and especially a public one. NPR may get only 1 percent of its funding from the corporation these days, but member stations rely on it for from 5 to 15 percent of their budgets. Don't use that financial clout to drain the news or try to cow those who would ask tough questions. Tough questions are assets, not threats. Let's open up the big national conversation, not run it through a partisan splitter. Let's celebrate tough reporting, the big tent, and the big mission, not small politics.

Two ombudsmen? One for liberals and one for conservatives? Parked outside of NPR and PBS and throwing down conflicting accusations? This is a bad idea. It sounds more like two battling censors-in-waiting. Let's not recreate ''Crossfire" on NPR's doorstep or, worse, in its newsroom. Let's pull together for great, independent broadcasting and vigorous journalism.

More music instead of news? Please. America is awash in music. Clear-headed, inquiring, fair-minded news is the more rare thing. And it is what's needed.

Years ago, on the other side of a Cold War wall, Soviet citizens got music instead of news when the news was too difficult. Today, there are those who would build a high partisan wall between Americans facing a difficult world. But news and understanding will ultimately unite, not divide. So tear down that wall, Mr. Tomlinson. Don't build it higher.

Americans know this can be done. And they're watching. And listening.

Tom Ashbrook is host of WBUR's ''On Point," distributed nationally by NPR.