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.

We’ve posted the text of the resolution concerning CPB that NPR members approved in a straw poll last week at their annual membership meeting.

On the Media responds to the Wall Street Journal‘s critique of the show with a brief note and links to reports referenced in the op-ed.

Blogger Andy Carvin points out that Open Source, Christopher Lydon’s new talk show, will incorporate the new idea of “mobcasting” into a companion website.

A large article in The Nation assesses NPR and finds it guilty of excessively safe and stodgy journalism. Garrison Keillor discusses his wide-ranging tastes in radio programs: “Once, on the Merritt Parkway heading for New York, I came upon The American Atheist Hour, the sheer tedium of which was wildly entertaining — there’s nobody so humorless as a devout atheist.”