Literally just a month ago, almost no one in the political world would have even recognized the name of Kenneth Tomlinson, the new chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But in just a few short weeks, he’s become a high-profile target for intense progressive criticism. It’s well deserved.<\/p>\n
The New York Times reported<\/a> a couple of weeks ago that Tomlinson was committed to dragging public broadcasting to the right, including drawing secret contracts to monitor guests’ political leanings and hiring staffers from the Bush White House, pundit Tucker Carlson, the Wall Street Journal’s Paul Gigot, and a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. Though he later said he was kidding, Tomlinson also told members of the Association of Public Television Stations a few months ago that they should make sure their programming “better reflected the Republican mandate.”<\/p>\n Yesterday, we learned that Tomlinson is also going after NPR<\/a>, which falls under the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s umbrella.<\/p>\n Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.<\/p>\n In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, in one of the strangest moves on journalistic standards in recent memory, Tomlinson decided to appoint two<\/i> ombudsmen to monitor radio and television content — one on the left and one on the right. “It mystifies me,” says Geneva Overholser, a Washington-based University of Missouri journalism professor who served as the Washington Post’s ombudsman from 1995 to 1998. “What in the world does it mean to have two? It makes no sense.” She argues that ombudsman responsibilities are specifically designed to be carried out by just one person as way to demonstrate that a single journalist can be open-minded and listen to all sides of a dispute. By setting up a sort of left-vs.-right, “Crossfire” approach, Overholser says, the CPB model “participates in the ideological charade that journalists can’t be fair. This is a perversion of the ombudsman.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n
\nSalon’s Eric Boehlert had a good report<\/a> today highlighting the depths of Tomlinson bizarre agenda, particularly the notion of dueling ombudsmen.<\/p>\n