Kenneth Tomlinson, Conservative Voice in Broadcast Oversight, Dies at 69

Kenneth Tomlinson, a conservative journalist who used his leadership role in federal communications agencies to counter what he regarded as liberal bias, died on May 1 at a hospital in Winchester (VA).

He was 69.

Tomlinson, a former top editor of Reader’s Digest, was director of Voice of America in the early 1980s and, from 2002 to 2007, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the federal government’s international broadcasting. His most prominent role was as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for two years during the administration of President George W Bush.

Tomlinson was appointed to the corporation board in 2000 by President Bill Clinton to fill a Republican seat. Tomlinson immediately campaigned to eliminate what he perceived as the corporation’s leftward tilt. His biggest target was the PBS program “Now With Bill Moyers,” which he believed had veered into blatant liberal partisanship. To add what he considered needed objectivity to PBS, Tomlinson introduced conservative programming, including “The Journal Editorial Report,” a weekly talk show featuring columnists from The Wall Street Journal. Another was hosted by the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, titled “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered.”

In 2005, at the end of his mandatory two-year term as chairman, Tomlinson successfully pushed for the appointment of Patricia S Harrison, a former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, as the corporation’s president. Tomlinson left the board after the corporation’s inspector general questioned his authority to order the study of Moyers’s show and to hire two lobbyists without the board’s knowledge.

In 2006, the State Department investigated his chairmanship of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. It found that Tomlinson had put a friend on the payroll and had run a “horse-racing operation” with government resources, specifically that he had bought and sold thoroughbreds from his office.