PBS politically neutral, says top exec

PBS President Pat Mitchell maintained Tuesday that the taxpayer-supported network is independent and free of political bias, rejecting Republican arguments that there is a need for more conservative programming to balance the content of public television.

In her first public response to criticism that PBS suffers from a liberal reputation, Mitchell cited public polls that have repeatedly found that a majority of Americans view the network as objective and fair.

“Our responsibility is to tell the truth, no matter what the consequences,” she said in a lunchtime address to the National Press Club. “And from time to time, it does lead people to question our motives, even suggest an agenda.”

But “PBS does not belong to any single constituency, no one political party, no activist group, no foundation, no funder, no agenda of any kind,” Mitchell added.

Her address amounted to a rebuttal to recent remarks by Kenneth Tomlinson, the Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private nonprofit that is charged with distributing federal funds to public television and radio stations.

The CPB chairman has made no secret of the fact that he believes the Public Broadcasting System has a liberal reputation. And his actions have sparked a flurry of protests from liberal advocacy and public interest groups, who are gathering petitions calling for his resignation and asking CPB to stay out of programming decisions.

Last year, he quietly hired an outside consultant to monitor the political leanings of guests on “Now With Bill Moyers.”

In recent months, Tomlinson has taken a series of steps he has said are intended to expand the network’s appeal, from promoting shows featuring conservative commentators such as Paul Gigot and Tucker Carlson to establishing a new ombudsman office to evaluate coverage – a move that caught PBS officials off-guard.