PBS
In an interview with Broadcasting & Cable, Bill Moyers claims that while he was at the helm of PBS's Now, the show was guilty of "aggressive reporting," but not liberal bias. (Hat tip: Romenesko.)
Following is the relevant portion of the interview. The questioner is B&C's John Eggerton.
A Monday New York Times editorial, "Public Broadcasting's Enemy Within," goes way over the top in its rhetorical assault on Kenneth Tomlinson, the former Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman who had the audacity to attempt to bring some political balance to PBS, which has long used tax money to fund liberal programming:
In his Monday chat with Charlie Rose on PBS, Ted Koppel played armchair general or armchair Secretary of State and explained why he would not have gone to war with Iraq, didn't see the urgent need to remove Saddam, saw no connection with terrorism, and worst of all, smeared Ronald Reagan as not caring about the gassing of Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. This is, as a matter of historical record, untrue.
Ted Koppel did a long interview with Charlie Rose on PBS Monday night, a day before he retired as host of "Nightline." One segment of the interview that stuck out was their discussion of racism and racial inequality and how passionate they are about it. Koppel said it "just infuriates" him. Rose agreed:
The Wall Street Journal editorial page today takes the time to explain its side of the controversy over former CPB Board Chairman Ken Tomlinson, PBS's expiring "Journal Editorial Report" program and the report of CPB inspector general Kenneth Konz. They were not impressed with Mr. Konz's amazing lack of contact: "As it happened, Mr. Konz conducted merely a cursory interview with [WSJ TV chief Kathryn] Christensen and Journal lawyer Stuart Karle, said he had no interest in even talking to Mr. Gigot, and never asked at all about Mr. Tomlinson.
Concluding a probe prodded by Senate Democrats, the inspector general of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Konz, released his report yesterday on whether former CPB Board Chairman Ken Tomlinson violated agency rules and procedures in his attempt to bring some (or any) balance to the routinely liberal on-air content of public broadcasting. Konz said yes.
Rachel Sklar, an occasional New York Times writer who posts at Mediabistro's blog Fishbowl NY, goes over the deep end in rejoicing at the end of Kenneth Tomlinson's tenure opposing liberal bias (or more accurately, trying to bring on some conservative balance) on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:
Is it at all surprising that today's "site pass" advertisement entitling you to look at the left-wing Web site Salon.com is an ad for a PBS documentary starting tonight? Once again, PBS shows by its advertising decisions that it feels its natural audience is liberals.
Many Americans that are truly concerned about bias in the media fear that what is reported by the press will immediately be accepted as fact by the citizenry regardless of accuracy.
After a half-hour of failing to challenge Vonnegut's nuttier statements, Brancaccio gushingly declared: "Well, I think it's easy to notice that some moments with you Mr. Vonnegut add up to I think a magic moment.