CPB's Inspector General to Pursue Probe of Chairman

The inspector general of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has agreed to investigate some of the activities of CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson, including the hiring of an outside consultant to monitor the political leanings of guests on the PBS public affairs program "Now."

CPB told The TV Column that Inspector General Kenneth Konz was not talking to reporters yesterday about the request for an investigation, which he received late Wednesday in the form of a letter from Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.).

In that letter, the two Democrats said that several recent actions by Tomlinson, a Republican, may have become "a source of political interference into public broadcasting" rather than "a shield" against such interference, as Congress intended in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

Konz did tell the Associated Press, "We are committed to performing a review and looking at the record and giving them the information they asked for."

In their letter, Dingell and Obey said that "recent news reports suggesting that the CPB increasingly is making personnel and funding decisions on the basis of political ideology are extremely troubling."

Those include a report that Tomlinson was involved in getting corporate funding for "The Journal Editorial Report," hosted by the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and that he pushed PBS to distribute it to public television stations.

A CPB representative told The TV Column that Tomlinson was not giving media interviews today. But he issued a statement in which he said, "I welcome the call by Congressmen Dingell and Obey for the inspector general to examine issues related to my efforts to encourage public broadcasters to take more seriously the need that our current affairs line-up reflect objectivity and balance.

"I look forward to working with the inspector general and with the Congress to clear up with finality distortions in press reports and elsewhere about our work to bring more diversity to public broadcasting," Tomlinson continued in his statement. "There would be no debate on this issue if more programs on public television reflected the high journalistic standards of the 'NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.' "

He did not elaborate in his statement as to which of several news reports about his CPB activities he was referring. Several were cited in the congressmen's letter to Konz. Nor did Tomlinson explain what he meant by "elsewhere."

Obey, the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, yesterday told The TV Column: "I think this goes far broader than public broadcasting. I think across the board there is an effort by Republican ideologues to force institutions across society to bend to their will. You see it in [House Majority Leader] Tom DeLay's raising hell with the courts and demanding they pursue his brand of justice. . . . You see it in this action here."

He continued: "It's the first time in my public life that one party has controlled all of the power centers of government -- the White House, the Supreme Court, both chambers of Congress.

"What you see here is a feeling that, well, this is the one chance we have to remake society in our image, so let's go after it, no holds barred. . . . When it's alleged Tomlinson had, for instance, hired a consultant to track the number of anti-Bush and anti-DeLay statements made on public broadcasting, to me it appears to be all part of the [political] network."