When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the bill included language insisting that fairness and objectivity should be observed in “all programming of a controversial nature.” These words were routinely ignored on PBS television broadcasts and NPR news programming. In 1992, Congress toughened that language, and public broadcasters still ignored it. How have PBS and NPR displayed a liberal tilt over the years? How have they dealt with challenges to their taxpayer funding? Take a look at MRC’s archive of articles for examples:
2005
[1]June 9, 2005 Media Reality Check: PBS on Tom DeLay: Favors "Virtual Slavery"? [1]
Exhibit A of a liberal bias at PBS is still the program Now,
first hosted by Bill Moyers, and now by David Brancaccio. On
Friday night, the blatantly partisan ghost of Moyers was still
hanging over the broadcast in an attack on House Majority Leader
Tom DeLay.
May 4, 2005 Brent Bozell Column: Alleged Tilt at PBS [2]
From the sound of the New York Times front page on May 2, they must have been waving smelling salts in the face of liberal reporters. CPB’s chairman was getting serious about
assessing accuracy and fairness on PBS.
February 22, 2005 Brent Bozell Column: PBS Is "Slightly" Liberal? [3]
Liberal lobbyists inside and outside PBS, including the New York Times editorial
page, are once again trying to convince the Congress to allow
them to create a massive $5 billion endowment so they may achieve
"financial independence."
[4]
December 28, 2004 Brent Bozell Column: Bill Moyers, Hypocrite [4]
Bill Moyers ended his tenure at the show Now
by raging against harsh attacks on conservative talk radio. But no one has heaped more invective, waved more bloody shirts, and uncorked more pure propaganda than Moyers in the last three years on his
weekly PBS drone-fest.
December 14, 2004 Media Reality Check: Moyers Ends With A Silly Whimper [5] (With Real [6] Video)
[7]PBS
omnipresence Bill Moyers told the AP that he would end his show by
uncovering the major story of our time, the media's conservative
bias: “We have an ideological press that's interested in the
election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested
in the bottom line.”
[8]
October 4, 2004 Media Reality Check: Gwen Ifill, No Moderate Moderator [8]
Selected to moderate the vice-presidential candidate debate, PBS Washington Week
host Gwen Ifill has boldly declared that Republicans conduct
“procedural assassinations,” that campaign “reform” opponents are
like terrorists, and the Starr Report is like a “truck bomb.”
September 29, 2004 Media Reality Check: Lehrer Favored Liberal Questions in 2000 [9]
PBS anchorman Jim Lehrer did not have a promising record as a
moderator. In the 2000 debates, Lehrer asked about the need to
end racial profiling and for greater control of gun sales, but he
found no time to challenge the two candidates from a conservative direction on the divisive effects of racial quotas or the
failures of gun control, for example.
2003
[10]Best of Notable Quotables: Bill Moyers Sanctimony Award [10] (With Real [11] Video)
[12]
In the most biased winning quote, Moyers compares people who wear American flag pins on their lapels to the Chinese communists who hallowed Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book.
November 11, 2003 Brent Bozell Column NPR’s Kroc-Pot Bubbles Over [13]
NPR received a $200 million contribution from the estate of liberal McDonald’s heiress Joan Kroc. She must have felt that putting her money on All Things Considered and Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation was in line with the rest of her political giving.
October 21, 2003 Brent Bozell Column: NPR Admits a Liberal Bias [14]
June 3, 2003 Media Reality Check: Can Moyers Be An Anchor And a Funder? [15]
Stephen F. Hayes reported that Moyers is doing something no commercial network would allow. He’s both the taxpayer-supported network’s most prominent prime-time journalist, and he moonlights as the President of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation.
2002
Best of Notable Quotables: Bill Moyers (Subsidized) Sanctimony Award [16]
In the winning, most biased quote, Moyers attacked the Heritage Foundation for being soft on terrorism.
2001
June 21, 2001 Brent Bozell Column: Another Pro-Gay PBS Summer [17]
Scouts' Honor didn't need to have words beeped out, and it didn't get graphic about gay sex. But it was a remarkable salute to Steven Cozza, a 16-year-old kid whose idea of fun is demeaning the Boy Scouts of America at gay pride rallies.
March 27, 2001 Media Reality Check: The One-Sided “Badge of Honor” [18]
PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers produced a documentary slamming the chemical industry entitled Trade Secrets.
They said his complete omission of industry supporters from the
documentary was "journalistic malpractice." Moyers said their complaints were “a badge of honor."
2000
October 19, 2000 Brent Bozell Column: The Debates Tilted Left [19]
If the 15 questions that Lehrer chose are in any way indicative of mainstream political opinion, the "uncommitted" voters are stuck
between voting for Gore...or Ralph Nader. Eight of them may as
well have been Gore campaign press releases.
[20]May 25, 2000 Brent Bozell Column: Incivility Reigns at PBS [20] (With Real [21] Video)
[22]On the PBS female-pundit show To The Contrary,
host Bonnie Erbe insulted conservative Linda Chavez on her need
for a gun to defend herself: "you have a greater chance of being
struck by lightning, Linda, than living where you live, and at
your age, being raped. Sorry.
October 18 Media Reality Check: Lehrer Picks Pile of Liberal Questioners [23]
PBS anchor and moderator Jim Lehrer reported the questioners
were "voters who were identified as being uncommitted by the
Gallup organization." Lehrer chose which of the more than 100
people would ask questions. Only one asked a conservative
question.
October 12 Media Reality Check: Lehrer Repeated Shaw’s Liberal Questions [24]
Presidential debate moderator and PBS anchor Jim Lehrer asked
more liberal questions, mostly by repeating the most liberal
questions CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked at the vice presidential
debate.
October 3 Media Reality Check: Stop the Church of St. James Lehrer [25]
The media touted the fairness of PBS anchor Jim Lehrer. He does
have a "quiet, self-effacing style," as NBC reported. He is not
Bryant Gumbel. But his journalism has historically followed the
liberal pack.
1999
October 14 Brent Bozell Column: Bill Moyers, Scaife of the Left [26]
Reporter Frank Greve discovered that PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers is
the Scaife counterpart of the vast left-wing "campaign finance
reform" conspiracy, earning $200,000 a year as president of the
Florence and John Schumann Foundation, a major funder of campaign
“reform” groups.
September 10 Media Reality Check: PBS Misleads Congress [27]
A magazine reported "the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
acknowledged late Wednesday that CPB and PBS executives provided
inaccurate testimony to a congressional panel,” claiming that
they swapped direct-mail lists with Republicans. But the swaps
were only with Democrats.
July 20, 1999 Press Release: Partial Transcript of Testimony of MRC’s Tim Graham [28]
MRC Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Telecommunications,
Trade, and Consumer Protection on the direct-mail list swaps
between PBS stations and the Democratic National Committee.
July 15 Brent Bozell Column: The PBS-Democrat Complex Is Exposed [29]
For five years, PBS stations were direct-mail list-swapping
with the Democratic National Committee. Not only do Republicans
surrender their tax dollars to get defamed by liberal programs,
stations like WGBH take their tax dollars and helps the Democrats
with their direct-mail fundraising.
1998
October 19, 1998 MediaWatch Review: Democrats Greedy, But GOP Worse [30]
Bill Moyers returned to PBS after a long absence for the latest liberal installment on October 6, titled "Washington’s Other Scandal."
Frontline apparently couldn’t stand the thought of devoting
an hour to a President lying to Congress, a grand jury, and the
entire public, since it was "just about sex.” It was another
sermon for campaign finance “reform.”
October 16 Media Reality Check: Public Broadcasting, Still A Partisan Tool [31]
Once again, NPR’s Nina Totenberg, who broke Anita Hill's unproven
sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas in 1991 and
compared her Hill leaks to Watergate, covered the Paula Jones
case as a politically injurious "Clinton-bashing" enterprise.
February 26 Brent Bozell Column: PBS Remembers Reagan – For A Reason [32]
PBS’s
January 6 Brent Bozell Column: Garrison’s Friendly Fire at NPR [33]
Garrison Keillor, the star of public radio’s Prairie Home Companion,
was mad that PBS failed to be leftist enough. He would just as
soon pull the plug on public TV altogether: "I don't think
there's any reason for public television to exist anymore, I honestly don't.
[34]1997
November 1997 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: Washington Week in Revisionism [35]
Instead of live coverage of congressional hearings into illegal fundraising, the PBS show Washington Week in Review
devoted parts of four shows to an analysis of campaign funding.
But instead of focusing on law-breaking, host Ken Bode promoted
campaign finance "reform."
November 13, 1997 Brent Bozell Column: The Profiteering Barney Scam [36]
The makers of the PBS show Barney & Friends
sued the “San Diego Chicken” for copyright infringement. Barney
the dinosaur was the third richest entertainer on the Forbes list
in 1994. What's gone utterly forgotten in this story is that
taxpayers paid millions to start Barney off.
July 24 Brent Bozell Column: Where’s PBS’s Gavel-to-Gavel Coverage? [37]
PBS cleared the decks for live coverage of the Watergate hearings, the Iran-Contra hearings, and the NPR-prodded kangaroo court known as
the Hill-Thomas hearings. But in the Clinton years, only four to
six percent of PBS stations covered Whitewater or Waco hearings,
and PBS passed on the Senate hearings into illegal Democratic
fundraising from foreign donors.
[38]June 12, 1997 Brent Bozell Column: Two New Developments of PBS [38]
A
former PBS president explores the idea of running commercials on
public TV, and Frontline does its first Clinton-scandal hour on
Asian fundraising and Oklahoma power politics.
February 6, 1997 Brent Bozell Column: NPR, Voice of Hypocrisy [39]
National
Public Radio hasn't shrunk from presenting itself as the scourge
of corporate bigotry, but this champion of the onerous
anti-discrimination regimes was pecked by the chickens coming
home to roost. NPR has been sued for race discrimination and
sexual harassment.
1996
January 1996 MediaNomics Article: Donations Rise As Funding Threatened [40]
In 1995, Newt Gingrich's talk of zeroing out of federal funding, which even haughty public broadcasters took seriously, led to station
donation increases of 15 to 40 percent.
December 5, 1996 Brent Bozell Column: Before You Pledge to PBS... [41]
Read Laurence Jarvik’s book PBS: Behind the Screen.
November 1996 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: James Fallows on Press-Hating [42]
James Fallows' book Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Democracy led a new, liberal attack on the media: too wealthy, too distant from the common people, too conservative. So Frontline aired a Fallows-boosting documentary titled "Why Americans Hate the Press.”
October 10, 1996 Brent Bozell Column: PBS Puts Its Power (And Your Dollars) Behind Clinton [43]
[43] Frontline’s documentary on the presidential choice showed Bob Dole as the dark figure from the harsh plains of Kansas whose mentor was...Richard Nixon. Clinton, by contrast, was the seductive charmer from the gentle terrain of Arkansas, who was like a Baptist minister.
October 1996 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: PBS Argues Media Out of Touch [44]
PBS funded -- without any rebuttal -- Hedrick Smith's four-hour documentary on how Washington works, The People and the Power Game,
which devoted the first hour to his claim that Bill Clinton has
been abused by the media, while Newt Gingrich employed “extremist
polemics.”
1995
June 1995 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: All Things Ill-Considered [45]
CBS's 60 Minutes
aired a one-sided NPR-boosting segment with accordion-playing
grandmas in Sitka, Alaska, suggesting there is no effete
liberalism on NPR.
February 1995 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: Clinton Fails Liberal Litmus Test [46]
Three months after a dramatic conservative electoral wave, PBS's Frontline
focused on how President Clinton had failed to be liberal enough in
three areas: gays in the military, campaign finance reform, and
government "investments" in job training.
1994
February 1994 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: Moyers Confirms Bias [47]
Bill Moyers' Journal
featured a unanimous panel of nine experts who believe wealth is
ruining democracy. The Clinton administration always let
corporations win. Democratic bills on campaign-finance "reform" were
always too weak.
1993
August 1993 MediaWatch Study: Stacking the Deck at Frontline [48]
MRC analysts reviewed every new Frontline broadcast
during the last three seasons (72 programs) and found
conservative arguments and experts were completely ignored in
eight programs on race relations and seven shows on the
environment.
1992
September 1992 MediaWatch Article: Mrs. Bush Fights Back [49]
As PBS anchor Judy Woodruff pounded Barbara Bush about uncivil comments
made about Bill Clinton just before the GOP convention, the
First Lady took Woodruff to task: "Look, you're saying nothing
nice ... where were you during the Democrat convention defending
us?
May 1992 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: Oops on the October Surprise [50]
Frontline
attempts a documentary digging out of its collapsed reporting on
the supposed Reagan-campaign conspiracy, but digs a deeper hole.
(Scroll down for more on this and on Bill Moyers.)
February 1992 MediaWatch Article: Bill "I Have No Agenda" Moyers [51]
At
a PBS press tour, Moyers claimed conservatives have offered "no substantive analysis of my work that would confirm their desire to label me, as I think he [David Horowitz] said yesterday, 'a left-wing Democrat.'"
1991
November 1991 MediaWatch Article: October Surprise Unravels [52]
Newsweek and The New Republic debunked the Frontline
claims of a 1980 Reagan-campaign conspiracy to delay the release
of American hostages in Iran for political gain. (Scroll down
for PBS/NPR coverage of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings.)
August 1991 MediaWatch Article: Critics Love "Tongues Untied" [53]
The PBS series P.O.V. (Point of View) aired the Marlon Riggs film Tongues Untied, parading his gay lifestyle. With its profanity, frontal nudity, large caricatures of penises, and gay lovers in bed, Tongues Untied displayed graphic sexual language and images, but liberal TV critics rained praise on courageous PBS.
April 1991 MediaWatch Article: Moyers Roots for Democrats [54]
Speaking at a Democratic Issues Conference, PBS omnipresence Bill
Moyers declared his heart still pounds for the Donkey Party:
"Down there in Texas I was raised on mother's milk and Roosevelt
speeches and over the years I still cherish the party's defining
stands."
1990
December 1990 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: PBS Planet Panic [55]
The ten-part PBS series Race to Save the Planet
urged viewers to support an "environmental revolution" of
drastic government measures or face "enormous calamities in a
very short time." When asked why an opposing view was not
included, a producer declared, "There are ways of confusing the
public in putting ping-pong matches onto television which we did not particularly think was useful."
December 1990 MediaWatch Article: Not Exactly Seoul Brothers [56]
The six-hour series Korea: The Unknown War hailed North Korea's Stalinist leaders for rebuilding "the North's powerful industries. They improved the position of education and women."
September 1990 MediaWatch Article: Prisoners vs. Propagandists [57]
After two years of dismissal, PBS aired the anti-communist documentary Nobody Listened, when it could be balanced by Saul Landau's film The Uncompromising Revolution. Landau lauded Castro: "Fidel touched this young machine adjuster and the man enjoyed a mild ecstasy. I know the feeling."
1989
December 1989 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: "America's Century" [58]
Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham was awarded a six-part series loaded with liberals (five times as many liberals as conservatives), and sulfurous in its attacks on American imperialism. In supporting the Contras, President Reagan "sold out his oath of office and subverted the Constitution."
October 1989 MediaWatch Article: One-Party PBS [59]
In a PBS series titled The Struggle for Democracy, Canadian journalist Patrick Watson claimed that "compared with some African horror stories, Zimbabwe has to be a democratic success, despite the one-party state."
July 1989 MediaWatch Article: PBS: Only Liberals Allowed [60]
While PBS aired plenty of liberal fare, films with a different point a view were spurned. The Other Europe by Jacques Rupnik and Soviets at the Crossroads were apparently insufficiently optimistic about the Soviet Union. But old Moyers specials were recycled.
1988
June 1988 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: Joining the Christic Cause [61]
The PBS documentary series Frontline laid out the lawsuit of the leftist Christic Institute charging a "Secret Team" of CIA operatives tried to assassinate a leader of the Nicaragua Contra freedom fighters, with special attention to the conspiracy theories of a liberal Senator named John Kerry.
January 1988 MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award Article: Moyers on "God and Politics" [62]
PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers complained about the growing conservatism of the Southern Baptist Convention, but praised the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua as "a movement that is fueled with Christian passion and Christian commitment."