MediaWatch: April 1992
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: April 1992
- House Bank: Networks Miss Plenty
- NewsBites: A Book Gone Wrong
- Revolving Door: Fox Guarding the Democratic Coop
- TV, Magazines Avoid Covering Clinton Finances
- Reporters Take Cue from Left-Wing Class War Specialists
- Look Who's Advising PBS
- Thomas Trashed Again
- The Watchdog Yawns
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS on CBO: Numbers Fumblers
Look Who's Advising PBS
DARLING MARLON
Last year, PBS put a new twist on its Point of View (P.O.V.) series by airing Tongues Untied, a 60-minute ode to black gays by Marlon Riggs. Many PBS stations didn't air the film because of its coarse language and images of two men rollicking in bed. Now, P.O.V. producers have announced this summer's series will be kicked off on June 15 by Riggs' new film, Color Adjustment, which argues that TV programs like Roots aren't representative of the black experience.
Riggs won new celebrity from the Buchanan campaign, which ran ads in the South attacking Tongues Untied. In their zest to play "truth squad" with Buchanan's ad, at least five news outlets (CNN, NBC, Time, Newsweek, and The Washington Post) incorrectly reported that the federal government only gave Tongues Untied $5,000 in 1988. The P.O.V. series, however, received $250,000 from the NEA, $300,000 from PBS, and $215,000 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in 1991.
Riggs is not only an NEA favorite, he's a six-figure federal darling. In addition to being funded by NEA, PBS, CPB, and the NEH, Riggs was just awarded $245,000 from the federally-funded Independent Television Service (ITVS), the new welfare program for radical filmmakers.
He is also an appointed arbiter of public taste: Riggs sits on the PBS Programming Policy Committee, an advisory board to programming chief Jennifer Lawson. Appointed in 1989, Lawson has a long left-wing history. In the late '60s, she worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the National Council of Negro Women. In the early 1970s, she worked for the one-party socialist government of Tanzania, perfect training for the one-party mentality of PBS today.
