EX-FCC CHAIRMAN NAMED TO PBS PANEL

E. William Henry, who was Federal Communications Commission chairman under President Lyndon Johnson, has been named to head a panel to review standards used to decide which TV programs the Public Broadcasting Service distributes.

Among those named to the panel is William H. Kobin, president of KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles.

The 11-member committee will review PBS program policies and procedures to determine whether they reflect “accepted journalistic standards” and allow access to the public television schedule to “programs that reflect the great diversity of human thought, expression and experience.”

The panel was asked to recommend any policy changes it thought were needed to better enable PBS to achieve those goals.

PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides some of the money that allows public TV stations to operate, have been criticized recently by some who think the programs do not reflect all sides of the issues they cover.

Sen. Barry M. Goldwater (R-Ariz.), retiring chairman of the Senate communications subcommittee, has lectured nominees to the CPB board on their responsibility to closely monitor PBS programming.

CPB has launched its own inquiry to decide if there is a way to analyze PBS programs to demonstrate whether they have a bias.

The PBS study is separate.

Both groups say they want to be able to answer critics by demonstrating that they have examined the issue thoroughly.

Others named to the PBS panel Tuesday were former journalist and now Stanford University communications professor Elie Abel; Tennessee First Lady Honey Alexander; Burnill F. Clark, general manager of KCTS-TV, Seattle; Katherine W. Fanning, editor of the Christian Science Monitor; Harvard advertising and consumer behavior specialist Stephen A. Greyser; former ABC News president William Sheehan, and Frederick Taylor, former executive editor of the Wall Street Journal.