PBS

PBS Star Tavis Smiley Argues Snowden's Historic Enough to End Up on a Postage Stamp
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 19, 2014 | 6:31 PM EST

Tavis Smiley is known for making extreme statements that make even his fellow liberals cringe in fear. Whether he is comparing the Tea Party to Jihad or saying Republicans only oppose ObamaCare because they hate the president, the PBS host never stops making inflammatory comments.

Appearing on This Week w/ George Stephanopoulos on January 19, Smiley asserted that, “I think very quickly that in the long run, Edward Snowden, we were joking earlier, Edward Snowden might be on a postage stamp somewhere down the road. How history is going to regard what Mr. Obama has done in this moment is an open question.” [See video after jump.]

The PBS Series on Constitution Surprises with Unbiased Debates, Including Gay Marriage
By Nathan Roush | May 31, 2013 | 4:51 PM EDT

The new four-part series Constitution USA embodied the conglomeration of Peter Sagal, one of the more left-leaning NPR hosts, and PBS, which has been scrutinized for its abundance of liberal programming, so one might have expected this series to just be another partisan broadcast espousing solely liberal viewpoints.

However, in a rather pleasant surprise, the show covered most issues in an unbiased, nonpartisan manner. For example, when discussing the issue of homosexual marriage, Sagal interviewed proponents from both sides of the debate on this matter of contention. [Link to the audio here]

CNN, PBS Fans More Likely to Vote Obama
By Matt Hadro | November 1, 2012 | 5:27 PM EDT

CNN and PBS claim to be impartial and non-partisan networks, but guess who their audiences are voting for? According to BuzzFeed, a significant majority of Facebook fans of those networks are likely Obama voters.

On a graph titled "What does your favorite TV channel say about your politics?", CNN falls well to the left of center, with almost 30 percent more fans likely voting for Obama over Romney. PBS lies even further left with close to a 50 percent advantage of likely Obama voters.

'Robin Hood Tax' Gains Support of Soros, Moyers, Tides and Media
By Mike Ciandella | October 31, 2012 | 2:26 PM EDT

Proudly claiming the legendary outlaw Robin Hood as their inspiration, liberal groups and past Occupy Wall Street supporters are pushing for a “Robin Hood Tax” on corporate transactions. George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and the liberal Tides Foundation and Proteus Fund have given over $4 million to organizations that support the tax, according to the official Robin Hood Tax website.

Support for The Robin Hood Tax has come from both Europe and the United States. Although they haven’t gotten specific about which corporate transactions would be taxed, advocates claim such a tax would raise hundreds of billions of dollars, which could then be used to promote social programs or climate change prevention initiatives. Many of its proponents also have ties to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Moyers & Company Attacks Conservative Organization, Promotes Liberal Group
By Mike Ciandella | October 17, 2012 | 3:34 PM EDT

It’s not Big Bird, but it sure is another reason to defund PBS. GRIT TV host and former Air-America Radio host Laura Flanders, substituting for Bill Moyers on PBS’s “Moyers & Company,” interviewed Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson on September 28. The two liberals used their taxpayer funded platform to attack the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC is a non-profit organization that promotes state-based policy initiatives. It’s been heavily criticized by the left for its politically conservative stance on many issues. In March 2012, a group of lefty organizations including the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Center for Media and Democracy (which are not the same group, despite the similarities in name), the Center for American Progress, People for the American Way, United Republic, Common Cause and Color of Change, launched a campaign to pressure the corporations that funded ALEC to withdraw their support.

Moyers Documentary Slams Conservatives, Pushes Soros-Funded Group
By Mike Ciandella | October 8, 2012 | 6:39 PM EDT

Bill Moyers is at it again. In a documentary entitled “The United States of ALEC” aired as an episode of “Moyers & Company,” Moyers and the Center for Media and Democracy’s Lisa Graves attacked the American Legislative Exchange Council for half an hour.

“The United States of ALEC” was typical of a Center for Media and Democracy/ Common Cause hit job on ALEC. The documentary slammed the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries and attacked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at length, accusing him of being an ALEC pawn. Moyers also claimed that the state of Arizona is “practically an ALEC subsidiary.”

To Moyers’s nominal credit, this time he admitted at the beginning of the documentary that the research conducted for this project had been funded by both his own Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and by the Schumann-funded Center for Media and Democracy. Common Cause was also involved in the making of the video, although Moyers did not mention his connection to that group. The Schumann Center is listed as a donor on Common Cause’s website, but the amount is not specified.

PBS’s Moyers Presents Anti-ALEC Video
By Mike Ciandella | September 25, 2012 | 4:08 PM EDT

Bill Moyers will present “The United States of ALEC” documentary in conjunction with Common Cause, which he also funds. The United States of ALEC will premiere on public television sometime in late September, 2012 (date and time still undetermined). Moyers, who Common Cause called a “veteran journalist,” has been instrumental in both funding and publicizing the attacks against the conservative group ALEC.

The official website for “The United States of ALEC,” which is run by Common Cause, refers to the documentary as “a presentation of Bill Moyers” and states that it will be featured on “Moyers & Company.”

In an email, Bob Edgar of Common Cause urged readers to “help uncover ALEC” by either watching the movie or hosting “a viewing party.”  The email called the documentary an “exposé of the American Legislative Exchange Council,” the “most influential corporate-funded political organization few Americans have ever heard about.”

Obama’s Failed Stimulus Funded ‘Green Jobs’ Initiative Ads on MSNBC: Labor Department Unrepentant
By Ryan Robertson | August 31, 2012 | 4:50 PM EDT

File this under unsurprising but notable, because it’s the type of story that mainstream media outlets will largely ignore in an attempt to protect an undeserving administration from anything that could hurt its re-election chances.

According to a Washington Times report by Jim McElhatton, the U.S. Department of Labor allegedly paid a public relations company at least half a million dollars of their allotted stimulus money to produce over 100 commercials that publicized a new “green jobs” initiative back in 2009.