Tomlinson Taken to the Woodshed -- Finally

It's SOP for the GOP. (Standard Operating Procedure for the Grand Old Party, for those of you who don't do acronym-speak).

The strategy: Take over a government agency you oppose by installing leaders who previously worked against the agency or its traditional goals. Use those leaders to make the institution as ineffective or controversial as possibe. Then underfund the office.

Some of these tactics were laid bare Tuesday by the release of a report from the inspector general's office of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which says former chair Ken Tomlinson repeatedly broke federal law in his efforts to counter a perceived liberal bias in public broadcasting.

As many pundits noted when Tomlinson's actions first came to light, the CPB was initially created to insulate public broadcasting from political pressure -- a significant concern, given the level of funding which comes from Congress.

Instead, the IG's report concludes Tomlinson violated the law through actions such as being too involved in the creation of a PBS show featuring the Wall Street Journal's reliably conservative editorial board and imposing political standards on the search for CPB's president (a job which eventually went to former Republican National Committee co-chair Patricia Harrison). The report also criticized Tomlinson's move to hire a White House employee to help draft a plan for creating independent ombudsmen for CPB and secretly hire an analyst with conservative ties to monitor PBS programs for bias.

Tomlinson, who resigned from the CPB board following closed-door meetings where a draft of the IG's report was discussed, released a statement with the report denying its conclusions.

But anyone who has monitored the odd story of Tomlinson's clumsy efforts to intimidate public broadcasting programmers recognizes the truth in this recounting. It only highlights the futility of conservatives' attempts to dismantle public broadcasting -- which remains a popular resource with the people and has evolved new revenue streams to reduce dependence on the government.

Given the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war, a coming fight over Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination, ongoing efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina and the looming midterm elections next year -- along with the public drubbing Tomlinson has taken from the IG -- hopefully, Republicans will conclude they have enough pressing concerns without taking on Kermit the Frog and Jim Lehrer.

SHORT TAKES - LOCAL STYLE

The Weekly Planet has dished extensively on the September departure of its circulation director, saying Zarko Bajsanski was fired amid speculation he was inaccurately reporting the number of copies of the free weekly returned each week. Until recently, both the circulation director and assistant circulation director received financial incentives to keep returns below four percent, says a story posted on the newspaper's web site.

The questions left: Despite assurances from Planet management, will this affect their official circulation numbers, which are assembled by an independent auditing company? And will this breach of trust affect how advertisers feel about the Planet? Or other free weeklies, such as tbt?

Perhaps readers will find out in tomorrow's Weekly Planet print edition.

And the Orlando Sentinel has announced plans to cut a "limited number of positions," following circulation figures revealed last week showing an 11 percent circulation weekday ciruclation drop from 2004. Dramatic proof of the kinds of staff reductions the industry feared would follow disappointing circulation figures.

Comments

[Anonymous]

The Weekly Planet's personal section has so much more depth than the Times personals. Do you think this opens the door for the Times to gain market share through a more mainstream personal section?

[Blogmeister Ethics]

Eric, your blog is snazzier than most, due to your practice of using images to augment your writing. My own personal blog is image-anemic, as it’s just too much trouble to get permission to use the copyrighted work of others. Trampling on copyright laws ain’t my thang. So I was wondering how you so facilely get permission from copyright holders to use their work on your site? By right-clicking on the images you’ve posted, I see you’re augmenting your site with images owned by these: The Washington Post, PBS.org, TampaBays10.com, ColoradoCollege.edu, and a copyrighted comic strip owned by HanscomFamily.com.So tell me true, Eric, how do you do it?

[Eric Deggans]

I'll have to ask our web gurus about that. I've mostly followed their examples and the actions of our other critics who use images in their blogs. So I'll ask them how it all works.Regarding anonymous' posting -- since papers like the Weekly Planet focus on trying to do what big papers don't, one of the ways they have distinguished themselves is in offering more in-depth and explicit personals. I think it may be tough for a family newspaper to offer the kind of personals they do. But we're certainly always trying to beef up those sections.

[Eric Deggans]

Just to provide a more comprehensive answer on the copyright stuff, I've been told by our web folks that if Times bloggers use images from our newspaper, the Associated Press or Getty Images, along with photos provided by media relations departments from any outlet, all those images are permissible, because of our various agreements and subscriptions

[Tim Graham]

Dog, all the Konz report shows is that you can fuss about "violating federal law" at the same time that PBS is "violating federal law" on a nightly basis. The law called for balance and objectivity in all programming of a controversial nature. Tomlinson's offense was to take that sentence seriously, while everyone around him saw it as a pointless phrase, sort of like the laws banning elephants on subways. Konz and the Democrats who pushed him want to say to conservatives: don't you dare try to determine whether PBS and NPR are balanced and objective. We'll call you law-breakers.

[Eric Deggans]

Tim -- I love batting these issues about with you, and we're once again going to have to agree to disagree here.One of Tomlinson's problems was that he took action to hire auditors without informing the rest of the CPB board about his actions. If he felt his actions were so righteous, why didn't he tell the rest of the board members what he was up to?If he was so interested in balance, then why did he insist on hiring a CPB president with strong Republican ties when the board is already dominated by Republicans?I find it interesting that the CPB has had two supposedly balanced ombudsmen examining the content of public broadcasting since April. In nine reports that I've seen posted in nine months, neither ombusdman has delivered an aggressive criticism of imbalance in public broadcasting.One of the ombudsmen, Ken Bode, wrote in a Sept. 1 report titled The Question of Balance, "that considerations of fair and balanced is not as big a problem here as elsewhere."If the ombudsmen hired by Tomlinson to ferret out bias aren't finding any, then what does that tell you?