Current (https://current.org/2005/05/)
“We want members who are responsive to readers, not to governments or lobby groups,” said NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin in the New York Times, explaining the decision of the Organization of News Ombudsmen to deny full membership to CPB’s new ombuds.
“PBS does not belong to any single constituency, no one political party, no activist group, no foundation, no funder, no agenda of any kind,” asserted PBS President Pat Mitchell in a National Press Club speech reported by the Los Angeles Times. She declined to mud-wrestle with CPB Chair Ken Tomlinson: “I really don’t feel it’s my place to judge the motivations of someone.”
Right-wing media watchdog L. Brent Bozell tappity-taps on a wedge between public TV and Bill Moyers: “Earth to PBS: When you are under attack for being a nest of left-wingers, it might not be the best strategy to let your most identifiable left-wing stars go to radical-left conferences and attack conservatives as evil.” From a webzine, National Ledger.
The irony of the debate over objectivity and balance within public radio is that “the marketplace has no issues with it,” writes consultant John Sutton on his blog.
Pat Mitchell, then president of PBS, delivered this talk May 24, 2005, at the National Press Club, in the midst of escalating news coverage of the conflict between public TV and Kenneth Tomlinson, then chair of CPB. Mitchell was preparing to announce recommendations for public TV’s future, but the Digital Futures Initiative report was delayed until December 2005, after Tomlinson had quit CPB and the dust was clearing. Since becoming president of PBS, I’ve often been at podiums like this one, with audiences like this one, although perhaps not as well informed or well prepared as a National Press Club gathering or one with so many familiar faces, those of friends and colleagues in public broadcasting. I appreciate the presence of national and local leaders of this great institution of which we are the current caretakers, and along with them, I am grateful to have this opportunity to make the case for the value and relevancy, and in fact, essential need for a vital and viable public broadcasting service in a democracy. Leading PBS at any time comes with bragging rights to be sure.
The sole black employee at Milwaukee’s WUWM-FM has filed a racial discrimination complaint with Wisconsin’s Equal Rights Division, reports the Journal Sentinel.
“I find it upsetting that NPR sees me as competition,” says Bob Edwards from his perch at XM in a Boston Globe article.
Bill Kling, president of Minnesota Public Radio, tells the Minnesota Star-Tribune that he has heard nothing from CPB to indicate that the agency will stop funding MPR’s national production Weekend America. A New York Times article last week said CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson had told board members the funding would end.
BBC news output will be affected Monday by the first of several limited strikes protesting plans to cut 4,000 jobs, Reuters reported. Further strikes are planned by the National Union of Journalists and two tech unions for the 48-hour period of May 31 and June 1 and for another occasion not yet set.