THE BUSH REGIME ASSAULT ON PUBLIC BROADCASTING IS UNRAVELING

Yesterday's NY TIMES had an article by Stephen Labaton on the continuing scandal of Bush crony and partisan right-wing hack, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, attempting to undermine the Public Broadcasting System from within. Beloved by ordinary Americans, especially in rural areas where it is difficult to find reality-based news, and despised by the Far Right which seeks to completely control all information, PBS was put in jeopardy as soon as Bush stole the 2000 election. Bush appointed a far right crony to wreck statutory boundaries that protect public radio and television from political interference. And although the whacked-out drug addict/Bush propagandist Rush Limbaugh has been braying away on his radio show that Tomlinson was fired because "he was trying to get some conservative programming on NPR and PBS," the TIMES reports that "Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting concluded today that its former chairman repeatedly broke federal law and its own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal bias. The scathing report by the corporation's inspector general described a dysfunctional organization that violated the Public Broadcasting Act, which created the corporation and was written to insulate programming decisions from politics."

It is clear from a series of cryptic memos between Tomlinson and the White House that Rove-protogee Tomlinson was solely motivated by partisan consideration in filling positions at PBS. He hired as many GOP fundraisers and incompetent cronies as he could find including a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee, Patricia Harrison, as the president/CEO.

An investigation started after outraged media reports began to appear that Tomlinson was illegally making personnel decisions based on political ideology, criticism that became deafening after the egregiously incompetent Harrison was named president last summer (most likely at the direction of Karl Rove). Until Tomlinson and Rove started butting in, the corporation's presidency, the senior staff job, has always been reserved for a nonpartisan expert in public broadcasting. Harrison is, of course, highly partisan and not an expert in anything except raising money for the Republican political machine. Other candidates for various jobs had to prove that they had made sufficient contributions to the Republican Party before they could get jobs.

Meanwhile, although fired from the PBS chairmanship and under a cloud of disgrace, Mr. Tomlinson remains the head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which supervises all American government-broadcasting programs overseas, including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and al-Hurra. Acting on complaints from some officials there, the inspector general of the State Department is examining accusations of misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees. Although several senators are demanding Tomlinson be fired from that job as well, Bush refuses to budge.