{"id":5738,"date":"2005-11-04T09:51:18","date_gmt":"2005-11-04T14:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5738"},"modified":"2005-11-04T09:51:18","modified_gmt":"2005-11-04T14:51:18","slug":"so-long-tomlinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/so-long-tomlinson\/","title":{"rendered":"So long, Tomlinson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Tomlinson&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4838.html\">partisan<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4215.html\">ideological<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/items\/search\/200506220009\">generally ridiculous<\/a> work as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been well documented. It was also thoroughly investigated. It&#8217;s the latter that, fortunately, prompted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2005\/11\/03\/AR2005110302235.html\">Tomlinson&#8217;s resignation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who sparked controversy by asserting that programs carried by public broadcasters have a liberal bias, resigned yesterday from the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting a day after the agency&#8217;s inspector general delivered a report apparently critical of his leadership. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The CPB&#8217;s inspector general has been investigating Tomlinson&#8217;s practice of using agency money to hire consultants and lobbyists without notifying the agency&#8217;s board. Tomlinson last year hired a little-known Indiana consultant to study the political leanings of guests on such programs as &#8220;Now With Bill Moyers&#8221; and &#8220;The Diane Rehm Show&#8221; on National Public Radio. He also hired lobbyists to defeat legislation that would have changed how CPB&#8217;s board is structured.<\/p>\n<p>The inspector, Kenneth Konz, also had been looking into whether Tomlinson violated agency procedures in his recruiting of former Republican National Committee co-chairman Patricia de Stacy Harrison to be CPB&#8217;s chief executive, and into possible White House influence in the hiring of two in-house ombudsmen to critique news programs on NPR and PBS.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Apparently, the report, which will be made public in a couple of weeks, wasn&#8217;t at all favorable. When a CPB chairman ignores his board and circumvents the corporation&#8217;s rules, that&#8217;s to be expected.<\/p>\n<p>As a practical matter, forcing Tomlinson&#8217;s resignation isn&#8217;t as big a deal as I&#8217;d like. His remaining term as a board member would have run out Jan. 31, and he should have been forced from his CPB role a long time ago.<\/p>\n<p>Still, this is a symbolic victory over a clown whom Bush never should have tapped for the job in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Tomlinson&#8217;s partisan, ideological, and generally ridiculous work as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been well documented. It was also thoroughly investigated. It&#8217;s the latter that, fortunately, prompted Tomlinson&#8217;s resignation. Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who sparked controversy by asserting that programs carried by public broadcasters have a liberal bias, resigned yesterday from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}