LYNN NEARY, host:
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting today released a report on its internal investigation of former Chairman Ken Tomlinson. Tomlinson spent two years trying to get rid of what he called the liberal bias in CPB programming. Today's report was requested by Democratic lawmakers who feared Tomlinson's actions were too heavily influenced by his political beliefs. With us now to discuss today's report is Paul Farhi. He is the media reporter with The Washington Post, and he joins us from the Post's studios.
Welcome to the program.
Mr. PAUL FARHI (The Washington Post): Thanks very much.
NEARY: Can you summarize for us what the report says about Tomlinson's reign at the CPB?
Mr. FARHI: Yeah. It says quite a number of things, as a matter of fact. Mostly it says that he didn't follow a number of procedures, that essentially he was kind of his own guy doing as he saw fit without the approval of the board or some of the executive staff. I think the most damning thing is that he attempted to get and in fact was successful in pressuring PBS to put on a program called "The Journal Editorial Report" that had a more conservative angle to it. This was one of his ways of trying to balance what he saw as the bias on public television, public radio.
NEARY: Now Ken Tomlinson stepped down earlier this month. He had already seen the report at that time. What was his defense at the time?
Mr. FARHI: Well, he basically said that `I had the right to do these things. These were within the normal guidelines of the chairman,' that this was in fact a sort of payback to him by Democrats who wanted to investigate him and who objected to his methods. He says he violated no rules. He says if, in fact, there was any violation, it was in the breach; it was not directly as a result of some existing standard. And in fact, to give him his due, the inspector general says a lot of this was a result of the staff not paying close enough attention and informing the board; that the staff should have been more attentive and alerted the board to some of his actions. So there's a bit of finger-pointing going on. Tomlinson could say the staff should have told them and everybody else says, well, no, Tomlinson had some responsibility to let everyone know what he was doing and be more public and transparent about it.
NEARY: Well, what were some of the problems on the board that were just--that led to this?
Mr. FARHI: Well, I think the main problem on the board was that the board was kept in the dark. The board did not know about some of the initiatives that Ken Tomlinson had undertaken. For instance, Tomlinson hired a couple of journalists to be ombudsmen to field complaints from viewers and listeners about public television and radio; didn't really tell the board much about that process. He hired lobbyists to fight a proposal that was floating around Congress; didn't tell the board much about that. He also hired a consultant to study the political leanings of guests on various NPR and PBS talk shows as a way to essentially prove his point that public television and radio were biased politically. He didn't tell anyone or at least he didn't tell the board much about that activity.
NEARY: How does what Tomlinson do violate the nature of what the CPB is supposed to be about?
Mr. FARHI: Well, CPB has a couple of roles. One of the roles is to act as kind of a heat shield--that's the phrase you always hear--a heat shield to screen out political influence. When it was created in 1967, there was a fear that if Congress was going to give money to public broadcasters, which it does at about a rate of $400 million a year, that this money would have strings attacks. CPB's role was to allow public broadcasting, radio and television, to act without political influence so it was created as this pass-through mechanism. In the event, though, there's a somewhat contradictory role, which is to see to it that public broadcasting has--is objective and doesn't have a particular bias. So it's kind of a contradiction to say you will be the heat shield but also you will ensure objectivity and balance.
On the latter score, Tomlinson felt that he saw a problem. He saw that public broadcasting had gotten, in his words, `too liberal,' and he was going to do something about it. And that's where all the controversy began.
NEARY: Paul, thanks so much for joining us today.
Mr. FARHI: Thank you.
NEARY: Paul Farhi reports on the media for The Washington Post. And you can read the report on our Web site, npr.org, where you'll also find an executive summary of its findings. And also you'll find more questions and answers about the Medicare at our Web site; again, that's npr.org.
This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Lynn Neary.
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