Non solo in italia - Paradossi di una televisione pubblica

L'ex capo della PBs e' stato censurato per aver condotto test politici che avrebbero favorito il WSJ .. mentre era alla ricerca di un commentatore di destra. Ahem, volevamo mettere Michael Moore anche in quel ruolo, scusate?
Ecco la versione del WSJ :


WSJ.com - PBS and Us:

"We have low expectations for government, and they're usually met. But even we were surprised this week to find ourselves sideswiped by an overlord of public broadcasting for producing a program that PBS asked us -- no, all but begged us -- to create. Serves us right, we suppose, for assuming that PBS actually wants intellectual balance on the airwaves.

That's the meaning of this week's report by Kenneth Konz, the inspector general of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), on the alleged political interference with public television. After a media flap this year over former CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson, Mr. Konz was tasked by John Dingell and David Obey, two House Democrats whom these columns have criticized going back 20 years, to investigate.

Mr. Konz has now done his politicized duty and strafed Mr. Tomlinson with drive-by accusations of -- egad! -- trying to influence the programming of PBS. As producers of "The Journal Editorial Report" on PBS since September 2004, we got hit with some of Mr. Konz's stray innuendo.
* * *

This is a story that takes some time, so bear with us as we relate the history. The first time we heard from anyone at PBS about doing a WSJ program was well before we'd ever heard from Mr. Tomlinson. In early 2003, Linda O'Bryon of the Miami PBS station contacted our publisher. PBS wanted to start up another public affairs show, and would we be interested in working together?

Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot and WSJ vice president for television Kathryn Christensen worked with Ms. O'Bryon to develop a proposal for a 30-minute program. We went so far as to pitch it in the spring of 2003 to a panel of CPB and PBS potentates. We were later told they'd chosen "Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered" instead, which was fair enough.
[Pat Mitchell]

Only months later, in December 2003, did Mr. Tomlinson first contact Mr. Gigot to suggest that perhaps another show would be possible. The two never did meet in person, but in emails and a couple of phone calls Mr. Tomlinson urged Mr. Gigot to pursue the idea.

Mr. Konz, the Inspector General Clouseau of these proceedings, has seen these emails, and in his report he seems aghast that "the former Chairman had been dealing directly with the former PBS commentator [Mr. Gigot] during this same time period." Mr. Konz hasn't released the emails, but we have them and are making them available on OpinionJournal.com so readers can judge for themselves if this amounted to a nefarious cabal at work.

The emails need to be understood in context, however. Whatever his email boasts, in his former role as chairman of the CPB board Mr. Tomlinson lacked the power to put any show on the air. CPB is a funding and oversight body but it can't decide to broadcast so much as a 30-second spot. That decision rests with PBS itself and its member stations. And in the case of "The Journal Editorial Report," that meant PBS President Pat Mitchell, who contacted Mr. Gigot in a phone call in early 2004. Could she come by and talk?

The two met, along with Ms. Christensen, on February 6, 2004, in Mr. Gigot's office. Ms. Mitchell said she wanted to get Mr. Gigot back on PBS -- on "Now" with Bill Moyers immediately, and on a separate Journal program down the road. We should explore the first option with Mr. Moyers, she said, and the second with some of her PBS deputies and folks from CPB. She never mentioned Mr. Tomlinson.
* * *

Our point here is that PBS came to us, not vice versa. Ms. Mitchell gave every appearance to us, then and since, of believing a Journal editorial-page program would be an asset to her network. If she or anyone else at PBS had ever thought Mr. Tomlinson's efforts were illegal or unethical or otherwise out of bounds, they could have said so. Since when is the president of a broadcast network a potted plant? (Mr. Gigot appeared on "Now" until Mr. Moyers stopped inviting him.)

We knew Mr. Tomlinson was pushing for the program from his perch at CPB, but our job wasn't to dissect the internal debates and politics of public broadcasting. That's too opaque for any outsider, and even apparently for an insider like Mr. Konz, whose report is laced with such weaselly and inconclusive phrases as "the questions involve whether" Mr. Tomlinson "breached his fiduciary responsibilities." Well, did he or not?

Even Mr. Konz is forced to concede that "our review found no evidence that CPB ever actually discussed withholding" money from PBS, which is supposedly the big threat Mr. Tomlinson had over Ms. Mitchell. Instead, this Beltway sleuth insinuates darkly that Mr. Tomlinson's "suggestions may have" influenced the show's "format" decisions.

Had Mr. Konz bothered to ask us, we'd have told him he had bought somebody's political spin. Apart from the kibitzing rights of any other viewer, Mr. Tomlinson has had zero influence over the show's format and content. The original planning meeting for the show, following Ms. Mitchell's suggestions, included two PBS officials, Jacoba Atlas and John Wilson, as well as CPB officials Michael Pack and John Prizer. They were consulted every step of the way, from the spring of 2004 through the pilot, through the program's September launch.

One of Mr. Konz's slimier bits of innuendo is that we somehow misspent taxpayer money by conspiring with Mr. Tomlinson to include taped pieces from the field and not just talking heads. The initial pressure to use taped pieces came from PBS and CPB officials who did not report to Mr. Tomlinson, and one of the strongest advocates of using tape was Ms. Atlas of PBS. As one of Mr. Gigot's emails makes clear, we were ambivalent about such pieces and certainly didn't insist on them.

"The Journal Editorial Report" is essentially the creation of Ms. Christensen, Mr. Gigot and Paul Friedman, the show's executive producer whose previous credits include producing the ABC evening news and the Today Show. As our show has evolved, we have used fewer taped pieces, and thus spent less money than expected. The original CPB grant was for $4.1 million for the pilot, startup costs and 26 weeks on the air. We stretched that to cover at least 35 weeks, not to mention putting enormous amounts of our own management time and advertising space, as well as no small amount of money, into the project.

We also did exactly what both CPB and Ms. Mitchell had asked of us, which was to get a corporate sponsor for the second season of 26 weeks. As it happened, Mr. Konz conducted merely a cursory interview with Ms. Christensen and Journal lawyer Stuart Karle, said he had no interest in even talking to Mr. Gigot, and never asked at all about Mr. Tomlinson. To call him Inspector Clouseau may be unfair to Peter Sellers.
* * *

Beyond these details, the larger political tale spun by Mr. Konz and other critics of Mr. Tomlinson is preposterous. We are supposed to believe that the vast bureaucracy that is PBS, with all of its inbred policies and interests, was somehow cowed by a single conservative board member who lacked any real management power. Any regular PBS viewer knows the opposite is true.

The real story is that Mr. Tomlinson was a rare political appointee who took seriously CPB's mandate to pursue balanced programming. As even Mr. Konz concedes in his report, under federal law CPB is required to review "national broadcasting programming for quality, diversity, creativity, excellence, innovation, objectivity and balance." And he also concludes that "CPB's actions were consistent with their responsibilities under the Public Telecommunications Act of 1992."

Most nominees to these broadcast boards enjoy the perquisites of the job and do nothing. An avowed conservative, Mr. Tomlinson sought to restore balance to a PBS lineup he saw as skewed left, especially the "Now" program with Mr. Moyers that had become the cornerstone of PBS's public-affairs lineup in the wake of 9/11. Moreover, he did so openly, appearing everywhere this spring to make his case. He was similarly open about his support for the Journal program.

What really tripped him up was the CPB board's decision early this year not to renew the contract of CPB President Kathleen Cox. The media leaks started not too long after that, all spun as if Mr. Tomlinson were attempting a conservative coup by trying to get a measly 30 minutes of conservative programming a week on PBS. House Democrats picked up the scent, commissioning Mr. Konz, who has now spent months and many taxpayer dollars to find Mr. Tomlinson guilty of such violations in the CPB universe as . . . encouraging Mr. Gigot to return to PBS.
* * *

We're proud of "The Journal Editorial Report," which has done well in the ratings despite being blackballed by some of the largest PBS stations. As an organization, the PBS system resembles late Ching Dynasty China: The Emperor at headquarters may give an order, but the warlords who program individual stations might or might not follow it. This is supposed to mean "local control," but in practice it means a group of programmers can work together to damage any new show. In our case, PBS put the program on its Friday evening lineup. But we quickly discovered that some of the network's largest stations refused to carry us.

The last time we checked, PBS stations in eight of the top 30 TV markets don't run the show at all, and another four do so in the dead zone of the post-midnight morning. There is more to say about those programmers and their motivations than we have space for today. But suffice it to say we know how Mr. Tomlinson must feel as he reads the stories about his profound influence over PBS. The reality is just the opposite.

Some weeks ago, we made a business decision not to seek a third season of our show on PBS. We informed PBS about this on November 1, before we knew what the Inspector General was doing or even when he'd file his report. When we called Ms. Mitchell to let her know, she expressed regret, and she acknowledged that PBS had failed to deliver the national carriage that she had thought she could obtain. She also repeated the truth that "it was my decision" to invite us to do a program.

Some of our friends think it was a mistake to attempt a show on PBS given our opposition to its funding over the years. And let's be clear: We haven't changed our minds. If there ever was a need for PBS, there isn't now in a world of hundreds of TV channels. But as long as PBS exists, we don't see any reason that its prime time public-affairs programming should be a satrapy of Bill Moyers and a single point of view. If Mr. Tomlinson made a mistake, it was in believing that "public broadcasting" is supposed to represent all of the public"