CPB Turns to Deans for Options on ‘Objectivity and Balance’

Besides seeking changes in CPB governance, the IG in November 2005 asked the corporation to “establish formal policies and procedures for conducting regular reviews of national programming for objectivity and balance.” The IG inquiry arose from controversy over Kenneth Tomlinson’s efforts as CPB chairman to tinker with programming decisions in what he called an effort to inject balance into public broadcasting. The IG’s findings led to Tomlinson’s ouster. Last month, six Republican senators and representatives asked the IG to investigate any CPB, PBS or WETA Washington misconduct in handling the documentary Islam vs. Islamists. They said the IG’s inquiry will help CPB and Congress make “possible systemic changes needed to fulfill the corporation’s mandate to encourage balanced and diverse viewpoints on public airwaves in the future.”

As board members learned at a meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, the deans could not agree on what needs to be done to meet CPB’s statutory mandate to ensure objective, balanced programming. The deans’ responses to the situation ran the gamut, said Don Rheem, a consultant hired by CPB to devise procedures to help carry out its “objectivity and balance” mandate. He told the board the academics’ opinions ranged from substituting “fairness” for objectivity and use of terms like “transparency” and “verification.” One dean said “balance” can be used to create a “false equivalence,” while another said his university would be willing to do “content analysis” for CPB. But that would require taxpayer funding, Rheem said.

Board member Warren Bell, an ABC producer and former conservative columnist, said his impression from meeting with the deans was one of little agreement on how to enforce objectivity. One dean felt it could be done scientifically; another said programming is “completely subjective,” he said. Some felt that the “language of the original congressional mandate is clearly archaic according to the standards of modern journalism,” Bell said. No journalism major will agree with a “strict adherence to the principles of balance and objectivity,” he said, adding that CPB could urge Congress to rewrite the law.

Considering the variety of suggestions from the deans, CPB Chairman Cheryl Halpern said in dealing with the IG’s recommendation in Congress CPB may have to have the deans speak to members of Congress. The CPB and PBS ombudsmen came to the meeting with the college heads, but had no preferences for “one approach over the other,” Rheem said. PBS ombudsman Michael Getler told us he attended the meeting as an observer and so did not give any advice.

The CPB does not face a “hard” time line for meeting the IG recommendations, “but CPB is making steady progress towards fulfilling our mandate,” said spokeswoman Louise Filkins. She declined to discuss the “specifics” of options in play until the “board is apprised” in August. Asked if the Public Broadcasting Service has been consulted, Vp Lea Sloan would say only that PBS is aware of the discussions at the CPB.

Stations apparently have not been approached for their ideas on the issue. Steve Bass, president of Oregon public broadcasting, said he had not talked to CPB on the subject, which he said could be due to the fact the corporation is only starting to explore options. Bass, a former chairman of the Association of Public TV Stations, said a rewrite of the law is “certainly worth a conversation” because “objectivity is kind of an old term. ‘Fair and balanced’ is probably a better way of putting it.” Objectivity would mean a standard of “complete and utter uninvolvement in a topic that is hard to carry off,” he said. On “content analysis” of programming, he said he would not be comfortable with CPB “taking on content analysis itself,” although he would more amenable to the work being done in an academic environment.

The CPB is required by Congress to monitor objectivity and balance in public broadcasting, said Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy. But that effort has resulted in “disastrous consequences” when the CPB has pursued “its own ideological interests in the area of so-called ‘programming objectivity,'” he said. “It is time for CPB to allow producers to create programs and for it to be the neutral heat-shield originally envisioned by public broadcasting’s founders.”