Leftist PBS Needs Right Agenda

I wish I could say “three cheers” for Howard Rosenberg’s concern about what he calls “self censorship” at PBS because of its rejection of the “P.O.V.” pro-gay activist, anti-Catholic documentary “Stop the Church” (“New ‘P.O.V.’ Flap Finds PBS at the Edge of Timidity,” Calendar, Aug. 14). Alas, the hypocrisy of his selective indignation merits at most one faint cheer.

Public libraries have almost universal support across the political spectrum despite their use of taxpayer money to purchase many controversial books. This wide support comes because libraries provide great diversity of books--right, left, gay, straight and otherwise. Everybody’s views get fair representation. But if a library began using its entire budget to purchase and promote only right-wing or left-wing publications, this tilt would soon spark protests . . . and if the bias persisted, protesters would start demanding that no more taxpayer dollars be spent to advance such narrow ideology.

The Public Broadcasting Service has practiced “self censorship” for decades; 99% of its social and political documentaries have tilted to the left. In effect, diversity of viewpoint has been shut out of PBS documentaries except in rare cases. PBS refused to air an award-winning documentary about Stalin’s deliberate starvation of more than 13 million Ukrainians . . . until William F. Buckley Jr. threatened to make a major public issue of the refusal.

PBS refused to air an award-winning documentary about Fidel Castro’s systematic imprisoning and torturing of gays in Cuba . . . until public complaints overturned this refusal. Rosenberg is familiar with these and many similar instances where documentaries critical of the left were stifled and denied airing--and he knows full well that these brief examples where protest broke through the censorship at PBS are rare exceptions to the iron ideological rule of PBS bosses.

In “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” and most weekly programming, PBS airs a far greater variety of viewpoints. But even in weekly programs, this taxpayer-supported network at times seems to deserve a new name: the Moyers Narrowcasting System (MNS), with many hours of many weeks each year devoted to the Lone Star homespun welfare-state socialist claptrap of this former propagandist for President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Some of these vast expanses of public air time given for Moyers’ personal whims and prejudices should be redistributed to the “intellectually homeless” who now are discriminated against and denied air time--to make room for libertarian, conservative and other alternative and fresh points of view that have long been “self censored” and excluded in PBS documentaries.

Why have we heard nothing from Rosenberg about this other censorship or about the lack of diversity in social documentary viewpoints at PBS?

Where was his moral outrage over censorship when liberal Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee that ultimately oversees PBS, blocked any consideration or open debate of a bill that would have required an impartial nonpartisan study to analyze whether there was a political and ideological bias in PBS programming? Like Dingell, Rosenberg knows that any such study would expose an over-whelming tilt to the left in PBS documentaries paid for by taxes squeezed from the majority of citizens who voted for President Bush.

Public forums supported by taxpayer dollars such as PBS are supposed to be open to voices from all points of the compass, not just to those who share Rosenberg’s liberal political inclinations. If Rosenberg wants to protect everybody’s free speech, then he should write a column insisting that PBS documentaries become a soapbox where many different points of view from across the spectrum can be heard and seen.

It’s time to end the segregation that has made PBS social documentaries the exclusive plantation of the Looney Left and a few politically correct special-interest groups; it’s time we integrated PBS and made its documentary air time a place of genuine diversity, like the public library. It’s time to end narrowcasting at what was supposed to be the the Public BROADcasting Service.