GOP Senators Blast Public Broadcasting : Congress: The lawmakers charge that the service has a ‘liberal bias.’ A threatened filibuster against the $1.1-billion funding bill is blocked.

A group of Senate Republicans launched a sharp attack Tuesday on public broadcasting, charging that it reflects a “liberal bias” in programming, despite the law’s requirement for balance on controversial issues.

“I have never been more turned off and more fed up with the increasing lack of balance and unrelenting liberal cheerleading I see and hear on the public airwaves,” said Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.).

But Democratic defenders of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting rejected the allegations, declaring that a small group of GOP ideologues wanted to force a “right-wing agenda” onto the public airwaves.

The corporation was created by Congress to dole out federal funding for public broadcasters such as the Public Broadcasting Service.

“Leave ‘em (public broadcasters) alone. . . . They’re doing a great job,” said Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), deriding the GOP critics as “a willful band of ideologues.”

Donald Ledwig, CPB president, said in an interview that, under its congressional mandate, the agency does not try to influence programs produced by people and stations who receive federal money.

“Our legislation keeps us out of cutting rooms, and I was disappointed to be criticized for something that was always the clear intent of Congress,” said Ledwig, adding that a 1990 survey indicated that 79% of viewers believe CPB news programs had neither a conservative nor a liberal bias.

The battle erupted as the Senate began to debate a bill to authorize $1.1 billion in CPB funding for the years 1993 to 1995. By a vote of 87 to 7, the lawmakers invoked cloture, barring a threatened Republican filibuster against the bill.

Despite the show of support in the cloture vote, a chorus of harsh criticism led by Dole and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) was leveled at public broadcasting.

Helms and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized as unbalanced and inappropriate a PBS series called “P.O.V.,” or “Point of View,” which broadcasts films and documentaries that express opinions.

McCain charged a leftist bias in “Maria’s Story,” a film about a Salvadoran guerrilla, and Helms criticized the film “Tongues Untied,” saying it supported homosexuality.

But Marc Weiss, executive producer of the series, said “P.O.V.” programs were never meant to be objective.

“As presented as part of a series entitled ‘P.O.V.,’--that’s ‘Point of View,’ Jesse--’Tongues Untied’ and ‘Maria’s Story’ are entirely appropriate,” Weiss said.

Despite the lopsided cloture vote, the public networks are still in for a fight, said John Lawson, director of national affairs for public broadcasting’s lobbying arm.

The Republicans, led by Dole, reportedly plan a number of amendments, including a so-called anti-smut amendment and a proposal to review CPB funding each year, instead of every three years.

“The number of members the opponents of reauthorization were able to rally for the cloture vote is a sign that this movement is not as broadly based as some would have thought,” Lawson said.

William Kobin, president and chief executive officer of KCET, Channel 28, in Los Angeles, said that the timing of the Senate debate could be harmful financially for public television stations, most of which are scheduled to begin big fund drives later this month.

“The March pledge drive is just around the corner, and an attack on federal funding is not exactly what we need,” Kobin said.

In addition to Dole and Helms, five other Republicans voted to block consideration of the measure: Sens. Larry E. Craig of Idaho, Trent Lott of Mississippi, Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire, Don Nickles of Oklahoma and Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming.

Staff writer Eaton reported from Washington and special correspondent Bernstein from Los Angeles.