Moyer's-Tomlinson PBS Controversy

I've been a long-time fan of PBS and NPR. It is hard to remember when my car radio didn't have a preset to the local NPR station and my wife and I made sure that we could get at least one PBS station on TV. I listen to WCVE at work. Having said that, I am actually not a fan of either. I've found that Sirius is an almost acceptable substitute for my classical music addiction and A&E, Mystery, BBC and other channels have pretty good replacements for PBS programming.

Over the years, I've stopped watching almost any of the PBS "news" shows. I stopped almost altogether 4-5 years ago when I watched Moyer's "Trade Secrets," an investigative report about vinyl chloride with long lingering shots of water vapor from cooling towers and stem traps when they talked about the evils of vinyl chloride. They also represented the "facts" in the show as current, when the stuff they were talking about had stopped 12-15 years earlier. When I questioned Moyers via email about his distortions, the response I got was something to the effect that he knew it was deistorted but he wanted to make a point. In other words, Mr. Moyers, seemed to knowingly misrepresent his facts. I stopped watching anything with Moyers in 2001, because I believed I couldn't trust his reporting integrity. His recent tirade with the Tomlinson "blacklist" on VOA confirms my earlier opinion.

NPR is much the same. I thoroughly enjoy the classical music and some of the regulars features, but I've become increasingly bothered by the absolute leftist slant of the "news" and reporting. Now that Edwards is gone, there is little to listen to. The loving reverence you hear each Saturday morning when they have Mr. Schorr regular time to vent his absolute palpable hatred of Bush and the Republicans has me switching channels when it comes on. I bet if Bush or the Republicans came out for the sun rising in the east, Mr. Schorr would be four-square against it and NPR would lovingly discuss it with him. Never do they have someone with even a slightly more centrist view follow Mr. Schorr. It is hard to listen to many of the featured programs without a long litany of "there is something wrong with you if you are not gay." About 5 minutes with Terri Gross is about 6 minutes more than I can take.

NPR and PBS have some excellent programs and some truly excellent people working for them. However, the absolute bias in their programming simply overwhelms Neanderthals such as I. Not a penny of my money goes to them any more and I dispise the fact that my government exacts tribute for them from my taxes. Stop the "public" communcations from feeding at the trough and then telling over half the population how dumb they are or how "out of it" they are if they don't have the preferred sexual orientation. Let them survive on donations or advertising. I hear that Air America is doing just fine.

Love some of the programming, but I just can't abide the one-sided message.

As I understand it, Tomlinson is attempting to inject more balanced programming into NPR and PBS and is taking great heat from the leftists who believe that they have the lock on what the public should hear.