A long-anticipated report on public television by the General Accounting Office, released May 21, advises Congress that CPB illegally diverted money intended for stations into the now-defunct Television Future Fund. The report, “Issues Related to Federal Funding of Public Television by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” says CPB operated outside its authority when it took money from the part of its appropriation that Congress designated for station grants and used it for Television Future Fund projects. Between 1996 and this year, the Future Fund made grants for R&D projects to improve public TV operations and fundraising. But GAO said CPB can’t legally make selective grants from funds allocated for station grants.

At a feel-good press conference May 13, all parties hailed the resolution of a decade-long fight over the tower of Fordham University’s WFUV-FM in New York City.The Daily News likened the scene to a Rose Garden peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. Even Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a joint news release endorsing Montefiore Medical Center’s offer to put the antenna atop its residential building. The new site is one-and-a-half miles from the scene of the station’s festering dispute with the nearby New York Botanical Garden, which says the present tower spoils the surroundings. Ralph Jennings, WFUV’s g.m.,

In the New York Daily News, WNYC talk show host Brian Lehrer relates a tale of being abruptly cut off during an interview with Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Two days later, Russert found that what goes around comes around.

Continuing her 70-city tour, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman explained in a Washington Post online chat why she recently interviewed sources familiar with the Palestinian refugees’ situation: “Our role as journalists is to go where the silence is.”

Bill McGinley, g.m. of WOI Radio in Ames, Iowa, tells the Ames Tribune that Iowa is nearing the point at which a statewide public radio network would make sense.

The Washington Post profiles Transom.org, which recently became the first stand-alone website to win a Peabody.

“Real diversity. Real public television” is the slogan for Philadelphia’s maverick public TV station WYBE, and the phrase could be a précis of General Manager Sherri Hope Culver’s article in Television Quarterly, posted on the station’s site. (Beware — it’s a long PDF download.) Not a member of PBS, the station specializes in underserved minorities and is guided in part by 12 ethnic councils.

The New York Times reports on newlyweds who met through a fund drive on WAMC-FM in Albany.

Minnesota Public Radio violated its conflict-of-interest policy when it bought a mansion to resell earlier this year, reports the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.

Democracy Now! host and touring author Amy Goodwin criticizes mainstream media’s “access of evil” in this Newsweek Q-and-A. (via msnbc.com)

“Does anyone in public TV realize that people have lives?” Kansas City Star critic Aaron Barnhart faults PBS’s scheduling of Colonial House as a marathon viewing experience.

The New York Times reports on WFUV’s plans for a new radio tower.

A Boston Globe article places Ira Glass among a throng of semiotics grads from Brown University that, “if they don’t exactly dominate the cultural mainstream, certainly have grown famous sparring with it.” Via randomWalks.

NPR’s Tavis Smiley appears tonight as a “Power Player” on Jeopardy.

Morning Edition without Bob Edwards will succeed by featuring energetic hosts and “fewer interviews with novelists,” among other changes, predicts commercial broadcaster Randall Bloomquist in the Wall Street Journal.