[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 86 (Friday, June 24, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7375-S7376]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          PUBLIC BROADCASTING

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to make a comment today about 
actions taken yesterday by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I 
have spoken about this on the floor of the Senate previously. Let me 
describe just a bit of the history here.
  I read some while ago that Mr. Kenneth Tomlinson, who is the Chairman 
of the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting--again, 
Chairman of the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was 
making the case publicly that public broadcasting has a liberal bias. 
He was relentlessly making the case that public broadcasting has a 
liberal bias--public television, public radio, and so on. Maybe he 
thinks Big Bird is a Republican--or a Democrat. Maybe he thinks the 
Cookie Monster goes to precinct meetings someplace for some political 
party or other. I have no idea what he thinks. Frankly, he was 
concerned about Bill Moyers, who was doing a program called ``NOW.'' He 
was sufficiently concerned about that, having made allegations that 
there is a liberal bias in the public television, that he hired a 
consultant to do an evaluation of the program that Bill Moyers does.
  This consultant was paid for with public funds. So I wrote Mr. 
Tomlinson and I said: You believe there is a liberal bias here with 
public broadcasting. You have paid taxpayers' monies to have a 
consultant--who himself, by the way, is a partisan--a consultant to 
evaluate a specific set of programming. I would like the results of 
that.
  So he sent me the raw data, which is about I think maybe 70 pages. It 
is a rather large stack of raw data--no summary. So I called him back 
and said: I really want the summary. There wasn't a summary, he said. 
He said he is making a summary, preparing a summary. He said he would 
have it to me, I think, a week ago now. And I have not yet received the 
summary, but the raw data was interesting. At least in portions, this 
program was evaluated, by a particular consultant who himself was a 
partisan, as is Mr. Tomlinson, the raw data was evaluating segments in 
public television, particularly in the NOW program, on whether they 
were anti-Bush or pro-Bush. Anti-Bush, anti-Bush, anti-Bush. Apparently 
the lens or prism through which they are evaluating public broadcasting 
was: Do they support the President or not?
  One was interesting. For example, in one case, it was labeled 
``antidefense'' because it was a program about waste in the Pentagon. 
My colleague from Oklahoma talked about waste a little earlier. He said 
there is a lot of waste in the Pentagon. If you talk about waste in the 
Pentagon, you, apparently, are ``antidefense.'' Unbelievable.

  I mentioned previously, my colleague, Senator Chuck Hagel from 
Nebraska, a red-blooded American patriot who served this country, a 
Republican conservative, by all accounts, who serves in the Senate, 
someone with whom I am proud to serve, was on one of the programs. He 
apparently said something that was at odds with the President's policy, 
so he was labeled a ``liberal.'' Yes, my friend, Chuck Hagel, 
conservative Republican Senator from Nebraska, is labeled liberal 
because he was on public broadcasting and said something at odds with 
the policy of the Bush administration. Unbelievable.
  Anti-Bush, anti-Bush, liberal, antidefense. What an unbelievable 
thing to have done to hire a partisan consultant to evaluate for a 
liberal bias in public broadcasting.
  Is Big Bird a Democrat? What a weighted question.
  So Mr. Tomlinson, Chairman of the Board of the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting, was not only embarking on this effort to prove an 
allegation he had been making--that is, there is a liberal bias in 
public broadcasting--but also working to put in a new president of the 
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
  So who does Mr. Tomlinson want as the head of the Corporation for 
Public Broadcasting? The former Co-Chair of the Republican National 
Committee. Yes, that is right.
  You say, well, that cannot be.
  Of course, that is exactly right. In fact, that person was just hired 
in a split vote by the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting. It is unbelievable.
  The Chairman spends his time alleging the organization he heads has a 
liberal bias, hires a partisan to try to prove it, to put together work 
papers that come from evaluating programming, and then embarks on an 
effort to decide there should be a former Co-Chair of the Republican 
National Committee to run the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
  I don't know, maybe it is hard to take a level look when you are a 
partisan. But public television has a program that deals with the Wall 
Street Journal editorial board. No one would suggest the Wall Street 
Journal editorial pages are anything other than solid, hard-rock 
Republican. No question about that. They don't pretend. There is no 
veil over their secrecy about their politics. That is what they are.
  They have a program on public broadcasting with Tucker Carlson. I 
don't know Tucker Carlson. I don't know Tucker Carlson from a block of 
wood. He wears a bow tie. He is a conservative Republican, and so they 
hire him to do a program. I think he has just left. It is not as if 
public broadcasting has not had conservative voices. They are just 
upset with the ``NOW'' program by Bill Moyers. Why are they upset with 
Bill Moyers? Let me give one example.
  Public broadcasting tackles subjects others will not tackle. One 
subject is the concentration of media ownership in this country. What 
has happened with the radio and television industry is it has been 
gobbled up into huge packages. One company owns 1,200 radio stations. 
The Federal Communications Commission, under pressure from the 
broadcast industry, was going to change the rules on ownership, and 
they did. Pressure from the publishers, pressure from the television, 
pressure from the radio industry. The Federal Communications Commission 
did the most complete cave-in to corporate interests I have ever seen 
in my life. They have new ownership rules that say, totus porcus, you 
can own everything. Here is what they said in the rules: In the largest 
city in this country, or in the largest cities, it is okay for one 
company to own eight radio stations, three television stations, the 
dominant newspaper, and the cable company. That is all fine. That is 
nirvana.
  That is absolutely nuts. Yet that was the rule the FCC came up with. 
Majority party, representing the interests of the President, says this 
is what we are doing. We will allow more concentration in broadcasting 
so that four, five, or six people will largely control what the 
American people see, hear, and read.
  Guess what. A Federal appeals court decided they were going to stay 
those rules. Three-quarters of a million people wrote to the FCC 
saying, do not do this. It was the largest outpouring of letters I can 
recall. The FCC did it anyway, caved in to the corporate interests, and 
the Federal court stayed the rules, it went up to the Supreme Court, 
the stay was not lifted and it is back to the FCC to do over. We will 
see whether they cave in, once again, or whether the public interest 
might prevail.
  My point of telling that story is this: Bill Moyers did stories on 
this issue about the concentration in the broadcasting industry. Do you 
think anybody else was interested in doing big stories about this? Do 
you think CBS would do a story about that? Or FOX? Or ABC? Or NBC? Not 
on your life, because they are the beneficiaries of those policies. 
They want to be bigger. They want more. They think it is fine if you 
live in one city, that one company will call the tune on information. 
One company will own eight radio stations, three television stations, 
the newspaper, and the cable company. They think that is fine.
  You are not going to see stories as you peruse the television dial 
about this subject from the major companies. They will not do it. Guess 
who did it. Bill Moyers, on a program called ``NOW.'' Did that upset 
some people? I suppose, sure. They do not like that. But the fact is, 
public broadcasting has been independent. It was created as the 
independent source of news, oblivious and impervious to the pressures 
and partisan wins.
  So the ``NOW'' program does a couple of programs on concentration of 
broadcasting and they collect a firestorm of

[[Page S7376]]

protests by the big economic interests and by those who support the 
President's policies on this.

  Let them all merge. They say, well, all these mergers do not matter. 
You have all these television channels these days, you have more 
opportunities. What you have are more voices coming from one 
ventriloquist. Add up where all the channels are owned and where they 
come from. It is exactly the same concentration.
  There are investigations going on at the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting. Mr. Tomlinson was named Chairman by the President, 
September 2003. He spends his time telling us there is a liberal bias 
in public broadcasting so he hired a consultant to track the political 
leanings of certain programming. He hired a conservative partisan to do 
that. Paid for it with taxpayers' money. That is now being evaluated by 
the Inspector General. He did not tell the Board of Directors about 
this expenditure. He, in a letter to me, said, maybe I didn't tell the 
Board of Directors but that is because the President of CPB signed the 
contract.
  That is not accurate. He signed the contract several months before 
the President that he alleged signed it had actually become President 
at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
  Now they have appointed a new President at the urging of Mr. 
Tomlinson, a partisan former Co-Chair of the Republican National 
Committee. Some of the members of the Board of Directors of the 
Corporation for Public Broadcasting have alleged to me personally that 
the process by which that was done was a stilted process, not a fair 
and open process. I am going to ask the Inspector General to include 
that in his investigation as well.
  I did not join all those in the Senate last week who signed a letter 
to suggest Mr. Tomlinson should resign. I was not one of those who 
signed it. But I now think he should. I think orchestrating the hiring 
of a partisan former Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee to 
run the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after he has made a mini-
career here out of alleging there is a liberal bias, to suggest he 
should be the point of the spear to move it in a direction that clearly 
is partisan is unfortunate, in my judgment, and will do dramatic injury 
to public broadcasting.
  My hope is public broadcasting will recover from these missteps. 
Public broadcasting has done a wonderful service in our country. I 
kidded about Big Bird. Big Bird is not a partisan. When American 
children watch ``Sesame Street'' and see wonderful programming--which, 
by the way, they took care of that program and it does not exist on 
commercial television--most Americans in the polls I have seen believe 
public broadcasting does a real service.
  I don't think there is a better newscast than PBS, Jim Lehrer. I 
think he is incredibly good. You get it straight. You do not get it in 
8-second sound bites as is the case with the network news. You get a 
discussion by both sides, in depth, about issues that matter to this 
country. Those who are deciding to take it upon themselves to try to do 
injury to public broadcasting did no service to this country.
  I know there is a network of radio and broadcast opportunities out 
there for largely one voice, the conservative voice, that is 
relentless, every day, all over the dial. The fairness doctrine is gone 
so they can do that. There does not have to be balance on commercial 
stations. There used to be. It does not have to be anymore because 
under President Reagan the fairness doctrine was obliterated.
  I know they do not like this message about the push-back on public 
broadcasting. In my judgment, when I see someone doing injury to public 
broadcasting, I think it is important to speak out. I think Mr. 
Tomlinson is doing injury to something that is very important to our 
country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from North Dakota was an 
important part of the work on clean energy that we finished work on 
last night and will vote on next Tuesday. I will make some remarks 
about that in a few minutes, but I acknowledge his contribution and 
that of the ranking Democrat, Jeff Bingaman, who worked with our 
chairman, Pete Domenici, and the Presiding Officer, who has experience 
in the House of Representatives on the Energy Committee.
  These last 2 weeks have been extraordinarily good for the Senate. I 
think we got a good result.

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