I know it's early Sunday, but please read Frank Rich of the NYT

[jmcon007]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/opinion/26rich.html

A tidbit:

"The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers' expense. If you liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations - or thrilled to the "journalism" of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies - you'll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio.

There's only one obstacle standing in the way of the coup. Like Richard Nixon, another president who tried to subvert public broadcasting in his war to silence critical news media, our current president may be letting hubris get the best of him. His minions are giving any investigative reporters left in Washington a fresh incentive to follow the money.

[alphafemale]

1. Good article. Thanks! nt

[rodeodance]

3. Big bird needs to sit hard on them.

....That money is not the $100 million that the House still threatens to hack out of public broadcasting's various budgets. Like the theoretical demise of Big Bird, this funding tug-of-war is a smoke screen that deflects attention from the real story. Look instead at the seemingly paltry $14,170 that, as Stephen Labaton of The New York Times reported on June 16, found its way to a mysterious recipient in Indiana named Fred Mann. Mr. Labaton learned that in 2004 Kenneth Tomlinson, the Karl Rove pal who is chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, clandestinely paid this sum to Mr. Mann to monitor his PBS bête noire, Bill Moyers's "Now."

Now, why would Mr. Tomlinson pay for information that any half-sentient viewer could track with TiVo? Why would he hire someone in Indiana? Why would he keep this contract a secret from his own board? Why, when a reporter exposed his secret, would he try to cover it up by falsely maintaining in a letter to an inquiring member of the Senate, Byron Dorgan, that another CPB executive had "approved and signed" the Mann contract when he had signed it himself? If there's a news story that can be likened to the "third-rate burglary," the canary in the coal mine that invited greater scrutiny of the Nixon administration's darkest ambitions, this strange little sideshow could be it.

After Mr. Labaton's first report, Senator Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, called Mr. Tomlinson demanding to see the "product" Mr. Mann had provided for his $14,170 payday. Mr. Tomlinson sent the senator some 50 pages of "raw data." Sifting through those pages when we spoke by phone last week, Mr. Dorgan said it wasn't merely Mr. Moyers's show that was monitored but also the programs of Tavis Smiley and NPR's Diane Rehm.

Their guests were rated either L for liberal or C for conservative, and "anti-administration" was affixed to any segment raising questions about the Bush presidency. Thus was the conservative Republican Senator Chuck Hagel given the same L as Bill Clinton simply because he expressed doubts about Iraq in a discussion mainly devoted to praising Ronald Reagan. Three of The Washington Post's star beat reporters (none of whom covers the White House or politics or writes opinion pieces) were similarly singled out simply for doing their job as journalists by asking questions about administration policies.

[I Have A Dream]

6. Great summary

What can we do to make the Powers That Be take the next step into looking into this situation?

[Gelliebeans]

2. Thanks

I watched Byron Dorgan speak the other day about this story with Tomlinson and Mann spying on PBS. This is absolutely scary in my opinion.

The bush admin just wants to own it's own propaganda machine disguised as Public Service. Faux news still has to answer to it's advertisers and the government can't take over FOX although it looks and feels like it sometimes.

They could however run roughshod all over PBS. It's their idea that PBS will make a better propaganda tool anyway. They can produce their own media and spoon feed to an unsuspecting public. This is how they took over AM radio.

[Coexist]

4. We know about all this stuff - but how do we stop them?

[enough]

5. There's a lot in this article I didn't know.

Rich does a good job on the story.

[Pepperbelly]

7. assuming facts not in evidence.

A-ha!

What "investigative reporters" are left in D.C.?

[Maestro]

8. Freakin' McCarthyism all over again

except that you need to replace communist with liberal. :eyes: What scum Rove and all his lackeys are!

[blm]

9. There are only a couple investigative reporters working in DC.

Landay and Strobel from Knight Ridder.

The Bushmoonies at the NYT and Washington Post are trying to gaslight them, by mocking and diminishing their work.