CPB needs a Critic, not a Censor

[SOURCE: Toledo Blade 11/18, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff]
[Commentary] Friends of public broadcasting in America have no reason to mourn the departure of Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who resigned in the wake of a blistering report on his tenure as head of what is supposed to be a political "firewall" for public radio and television. That is not to say that all board members or officials in public broadcasting must be cheerleaders for everything said and done on the stations that bring alternative programming to the vast but hardly varied panoply of commercial broadcasting. Mr. Tomlinson, who was accused of violating the Public Broadcasting Act and the CPB's own regulations, apparently saw his role as one who would "balance" coverage of politics on public radio and television by monitoring "liberal" programs on his own authority and lobby to put on "conservative" programs, such as the Wall Street Journal's editorial board discussions at a reported cost of $5 million. Mr. Tomlinson's departure will not make the task of public broadcasting any easier. The need for funds to repair the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina may lead to efforts to reduce PBS funds. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will have to walk a fine line between censorship and mindless objectivity. Fans of public radio especially want the news broadcast in context, and all 50 states benefit from it, including those that, as Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska noted, do not have communities large enough and wealthy enough to support major fund-raising. Public broadcasting in the United States provides news and entertainment of a sort different from the usual commercial fare. That alone is enough to warrant its continuation, free of crude efforts at censorship such as Mr. Tomlinson tried to implement. Freedom cannot be sustained without variety in the media from which millions of Americans glean news and opinion so essential to maintaining a free society.
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