Former Now host on media bias and his feud
with former CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson
Broadcasting Cable
John Eggerton
November 28, 2005
Bill Moyers became the central figure in absentia in the controversy
surrounding former Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Chairman Kenneth
Tomlinson. It was Tomlinson who pointed to Moyers' Now newscast on PBS as a
chief reason for his efforts to bring "balance' to public
broadcasting by adding conservative shows. Moyers has since left Now and is
currently president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy. He spoke
with B&C's John Eggerton in the wake of a CPB Inspector General report
concluding Tomlinson had violated the law by dealing directly with a programmer
during the creation of a show to balance Moyers' program.
You are the exemplar of liberal PBS bias, according to Ken Tomlinson. Was
your show liberally biased?
Right-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive
reporting as liberal.
We were biased, all right—in favor of uncovering the news that
powerful people wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department
of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil
industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress,
neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the
manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq.
We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories, and the administration
turned its hit men loose on us.
Tomlinson actually told The Washington Post that he was irate over one of
our documentary reports from a small town in Pennsylvania hard-hit by
outsourcing.
If reporting on what's happening to ordinary people thrown overboard by
circumstances beyond their control and betrayed by Washington officials is
liberalism, I stand convicted.
It is an old canard of right-wing ideologues like Tomlinson to equate tough
journalism with liberalism. They hope to distract people from the message by
trying to discredit the messenger.
Now threw the fear of God into Tomlinson's crowd because they couldn't
dispute the accuracy of our reporting.
And when we weren't reporting the truth behind the news, we were
interviewing a wide variety of people: Ralph Reed and Ralph Nader; Cal Thomas
and Molly Ivins; Robert Bartley, editor of the Wall Street Journal; Katrina
Vandenheuval, editor of The Nation; The Conservative Union's David Keene;
Dorothy Rabinowitz (also of the Wall Street Journal); Charles Lewis of the
Center for Public Integrity; the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore; historian
Howard Zinn; and Indian activist Arundhati Roy. And on and on.
Did you get any direct pressure from Tomlinson or CPB to change the content
of your show?
The people at PBS told me they were getting excruciating pressure because of
our reporting, including threats to de-fund public television unless
"Moyers is dealt with.' They never identified the source of that
pressure.
We know now it was Tomlinson. [Tomlinson] even told some people [we have
confirmed it with two people who were present] that "Moyers is a coward
because he doesn't want to talk to people who disagree with him.'
Hello? See the above list of all the conservatives who appeared on the
show.
What happened to the debate idea between you two?
I asked him repeatedly. He refused. He didn't even respond. But when all
this started to unfold early last year, I asked three times to meet with the
CPB board and try to find out what was going on.
I thought we could reason together and maybe agree on how to cooperate to
protect Public Broadcasting's independence. I mean, I not only read the Public
Broadcasting Act of 1967, I helped to create it. CPB's job was to be a firewall
between guys like them and the producers, journalists, and content of public
broadcasting.
I thought at the time that I was dealing with people who cared about this
institution. I didn't realize they had gone over to the dark side.
What prompted your departure from Now?
I needed a break, and I also sensed that we were up against serial abusers
and that I could fight back more effectively if I weren't on the air.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Investigators at the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting concluded today that its former chairman repeatedly broke federal
law and its own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal
bias.
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