Federally funded television network that airs programming with a left/liberal slant
Founded in 1969, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a nonprofit television network composed of 354 stations in the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Available to 99 percent of American homes with televisions, PBS programming (which consists predominantly of educational and artistic presentations) draws an average audience of some 75 million viewers per week.
PBS is an outgrowth of National Educational Television (NET), a TV network formed in 1952 with grant money from the Ford Foundation's Fund for Adult Education. Similar to PBS, NET's programming was a combination of educational shows and social documentaries with a left/liberal slant.
PBS has a "common carriage" policy that dictates the programming schedule that all its local affiliates must follow during "prime time" evening hours. But a different set of rules governs PBS daytime programming. Member stations (whose operators typically include state agencies, nonprofit organizations, and universities) can purchase the specific shows and specials distributed by PBS National that they wish to air, and they have complete autonomy to air them whenever they wish.
Ever since the Vietnam War era, the content of PBS programming generally has reflected a liberal-to-left political slant. As Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan puts it, "…arguing over whether PBS is and has long been politically liberal is like arguing over whether the ocean is and has long been wet. Of course it is, and everyone knows it."
According to Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center (MRC), "The left maintains an iron grip on PBS." A 1996 MRC study reported that "since PBS and NBC News began joint convention coverage in 1992, PBS/NBC has failed to apply ideological labels in a fair and balanced manner. Overall … PBS/NBC anchors and correspondents were more than three times as likely to tag Democrats with the 'moderate' label ... as Republicans ..." (Read the quotes.)
A prominent host and producer of PBS programs over the years has been Bill Moyers, President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. Since 1970, Moyers has hosted such shows as This Week; Bill Moyers' Journal; NOW with Bill Moyers; Moyers on America; Bill Moyers: On Faith and Reason; and Bill Moyers' Journal.
As of 2004, approximately 30 PBS affiliates had stopped airing Moyers' partisan show NOW during the network's pledge drives, partly out of fear that the program's unmistakable bias would alienate many potential donors. NOW had also become an ethical embarrassment because Moyers had used his taxpayer-subsidized show to promote guests from at least 16 leftist organizations that had received at least $4.8 million in grants from the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. Moyers had neglected to inform his audience of this conflict of interest involving an organization of which he was President and from which he personally pocketed $200,000 per year.
In addition to the programs produced by Moyers, other PBS shows have likewise demonstrated a liberal/left bias, including Frontline. Launched in 1983, Frontline is considered PBS's "flagship public affairs series." In its coverage of the 2004 presidential campaigns, the show consistently portrayed Democratic nominee John Kerry favorably, while casting incumbent President George W. Bush in a negative light.
In 2005, PBS aired the three-hour documentary series Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. A PBS synopsis of this production stated: "Much of the history of the past 200 years revolved around a single idea. It was the vision that life could be lived in peace and brotherhood if only property were shared by all and distributed equally, eliminating the source of greed, envy, poverty and strife. This idea was called 'socialism' and it was man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine grounded on science rather than revelation." A PBS companion website for the series contains lesson plans to help high-school teachers "familiarize students" with socialism and Marxism.
PBS also produced the documentary Enemies of War, which recounts the 1980s Civil War in El Salvador. This production denigrates the elected anti-Communist Salvadoran government that was fighting for its life (with help from the Reagan administration) against Marxist terrorists from neighboring Nicaragua (who were backed by the Sandinistas and Cuba). Moreover, it lauds the efforts of the many "[p]eople -- ordinary and extraordinary -- [who] halted U.S. involvement, and a small country began generating peace instead of war." Praised effusively in the film is Jim McGovern, the current Massachusetts congressman who in the Eighties was a congressional aide opposed to Reagan's efforts.
Other notable programs aired by PBS include: Alcatraz Is Not an Island, about the 1969 takeover and occupation of Alcatraz Island by American Indian activists; Affluenza, a one-hour television special that explores "the high social and environmental costs of materialism and over-consumption"; The Good War and Those Who Refused To Fight It, about conscientious objectors who refused to take part in war efforts during World War II; and Islam: Empire of Faith, a historically inaccurate production that whitewashes the more violent and intolerant aspects of the Islamic faith.
In April 2007, PBS shelved another documentary on Islam, titled Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center, which examines how moderate American Muslims have struggled to resist Islamic militancy. Frank Gaffney, Jr., co-Executive Producer of the film and President of the Center for Security Policy, has said that the documentary addresses questions of "what happens when people stand up to … Islamofascists." Gaffney believes that PBS suppressed the film because its bluntness did not advance the network's multicultural agenda. "This wasn't just a question of editing this or editing that," Gaffney stated. "This was a question of changing, as they've said themselves, the structure and the context of the film in order to make it 'more fair,' in their [PBS's] words -- evidently, more flattering to the Islamists whom we portray saying and doing horrible things with respect to these anti-Islamist Muslims."
PBS receives the bulk of its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a nonprofit, private corporation created by Congress in 1967. CPB's annual budget is derived almost entirely ($386.8 million of its $480.4 million 2005) from federal grants; i.e., taxpayer money. With that capital, CPB is able to fund PBS, National Public Radio, and other national and local broadcasters.
Since its inception, CPB has consistently professed its "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature." But in 2005, CPB president Kenneth Tomlinson told interviewers that he was "concerned about perceptions that not all parts of the political spectrum are reflected on public broadcasting," and that "eliminating the perception of political bias ... is important to maintain continued public support for public broadcasting."
In addition to the federal funding it receives through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS is also supported by the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, the Community Foundation Silicon Valley, the DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Northwestern Mutual Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
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