The Washington Post reviews the controversy over CPB’s push to balance public broadcasting in a profile of board chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. “I never started out to make a campaign of this,” he said, describing the resistance he’s encountered as “symbolic of the tone-deafness” and “intellectual dishonesty” of public broadcasting’s leadership. Tomlinson gives the Post a different account of his decision to address pubTV’s “liberal bias” than the one he offered last week in a Washington Times op-ed. Meanwhile, in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed KQED President and PBS Board member Jeff Clarke offers his own take: “CPB officials have recently claimed that public broadcasting needs to improve its ability to reach more Americans.

Salon media critic Eric Boehlert writes that while there are plenty of questions surrounding CPB’s new content monitors, “it is CPB’s tapping of two ombudsmen that has most raised eyebrows in journalism circles.” Said NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin: “I don’t think ombudsmen should be in the Crossfire business.” Salon also posts excerpts from Bill Moyers’ speech at last weekend’s National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis. (day-pass required)

The progressive Capital Times in Madison, Wisc., recounts Bill Moyers’ Sunday speech at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, his first public response to CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson’s well-documented quest for “balance.” “I should put my detractors on notice,” Moyers, 70, said. “They might compel me out of the rocking chair and into the anchor chair.” Regarding Tomlinson’s claim he kept his investigation of Now secret to protect PBS’ image, Moyers said, “Where I come from in Texas, we shovel that stuff every day.” Democracy Now! airs much of the speech in its Monday broadcast, and has posted a partial transcript on its website.

After a week as target of dark accusations and suspicions, Ken Tomlinson was weary. “We’ve all said what we had to say,” the CPB Board chairman told Current. “Let’s all declare victory and move on.” That may make sense to many public broadcasters, but Tomlinson’s critics aren’t likely to give the issue a rest. CPB’s independent inspector general, Kenneth Konz, said he will investigate charges by two key House Democrats that Tomlinson violated the Public Broadcasting Act by commissioning a political content review of Now with Bill Moyers and recruiting a White House staff member to write guidelines for CPB’s new ombudsmen.

CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson worked to initiate outside studies of public radio as well as TV, the New York Times reports. “Late last year, without notifying board members or NPR, Mr. Tomlinson contacted S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a research group, about conducting a study on whether NPR’s Middle East coverage was more favorable to Arabs than to Israelis,” according to the report. Tomlinson, also head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees international broadcasting programs such as Voice of America, has continued to block NPR programming from a U.S.-owned

Six months after retiring as host of PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers, the longtime journalist spoke to activists gathered for the conference in St. Louis May 15, 2005. This prepared text was posted by Free Press [website], the sponsor of the conference. I can’t imagine better company on this beautiful Sunday morning in St. Louis. You’re church for me today, and there’s no congregation in the country where I would be more likely to find more kindred souls than are gathered here. There are so many different vocations and callings in this room — so many different interests and aspirations of people who want to reform the media — that only a presiding bishop like Bob McChesney with his great ecumenical heart could bring us together for a weekend like this.

In 10 years, former APTS and CPB exec Ric Grefe built the American Institute of Graphic Arts from what was perceived to be a “New York club” for designers into a national organization with 52 chapters and 17,800 members, writes designer William Drenttel on his group blog, Design Observer. (Extraneous treat for dog lovers: Drenttel’s dog had puppies.)

Cartoonist Mark Fiore envisions a “Corporation for Politicized Broadcasting.”

Calling CPB Board Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson’s efforts to bring more conservatives into public broadcasting “extremely troubling,” two House Democrats asked CPB’s Inspector General to investigate hiring and contracting practices at the corporation, reports the Los Angeles Times. [Text of letter in PDF.]

“I don’t want to achieve balance by taking programs that are the favorites of good liberals off the air,” said CPB chairman Ken Tomlinson on the latest On the Media. “I want to make sure that when you have programs that tilt left, we also have some programs that tilt right so the viewer can make up his or her own mind.”

The Sundance Documentary Fund, One World US, Line TV and New California Media are grantees in the Ford Foundation’s $50 million public-media initiative, along with pubcasting groups such as PRX, PRI, Public Radio Capital, the minority consortia and ITVS, the foundation disclosed today.

Salon’s Eric Boehlert sizes up CPB’s push for balance and Ken Tomlinson pens an op-ed for the Washington Times.

Aaron Barnhart of TV Barn outlines why the ruckus over public broadcasting is overblown.

The Ford Foundation is spending $50 million over five years on public media grants, including $10M to PBS and $7.5M to NPR, the New York Times reported. The PBS grant will back new programming ideas and help start the PBS Foundation. It was not clear whether the $50M sum includes $2 million to ITVS for international viewpoints, $1.8M given this year to Link TV, $1M to American University’s Center for Social Media, $600,000 to Consumers Union for media policy work or $300,000 to Prometheus Radio Project for work in grassroots radio. The foundation spent millions to start public TV stations and develop national programming for them in the 1950s and 1960s.

In the June edition of pubTV’s In the Life, the lesbian moms who were game enough to pretend to be talking to a cartoon rabbit instead of a video camera comment on their run-in with Postcards from Buster.