It's very alarming that several steps toward media control have been taken by our government. One such step is the practice of "news stories" from the White House or other government agencies given to the media and printed or shown without identifying the source, thus implying they have come from independent journalists. Once considered illegal, it is now allowed by a recent Justice Department ruling.
Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Republican-dominated eight-member board at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), has begun a sweeping campaign to monitor public broadcasting for liberal bias and to turn it more to the right ("PBS Head Wards Off Liberal Bias Accusation," May 25). He paid a contractor $10,000 last year to monitor "Now" with Bill Moyers.
Conservative meddling was seen when the widely admired Bob Edwards was fired from his job as host of the NPR "Morning Edition" news program. The GOP majority on the board are said to be planning to redirect money from news coverage to music programming and are preparing an "examination" of National Public Radio's Middle East coverage for evidence of bias.
Although CPB funding in 2004 was about 15 percent of public broadcasting's funds, the public contributed a great deal more for public radio and TV. Contributors expect the CPB to be bipartisan and the programming free of government interference or political party bias.
The myth of a liberal press is being exchanged for Big Brother dictating what we can see and hear.
-Betty Krueger,
Washington.
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