Pushing PBS to the right

Eric Boehlert in Salon has an extended piece on an issue that's been gathering steam for some time: the attempt by the CPB and its Republican chair, Ken Tomlinson, to push PBS firmly to the right.

The thing is, everyone who's not an extreme right-winger knows that PBS does not display a systematic liberal bias (and polls show this is the case with the general public too). If anything, I think, many liberals see PBS's flagship "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" as leaning to the right. If PBS does become just another quiet and uncritical tool of those in power, then it will be one more place in the American media spectrum that is effectively off-limits to serious discussion of news and public affairs. As more and more Americans despair of receiving full, fair, accurate and critical news - of their own country as well as other countries - from U.S. media, so they will desperately look abroad for the news they need. The likely beneficiaries from this development will be overseas media - and especially those in Britain.