Public TV

Bruce Christensen’s column “What Critics of PBS Want: Public TV Lite,” (Opinion, June 7) is false and misleading. His laundry list of phony scare fantasies claiming that conservatives want “a stripped-down model for state-run media” is a big lie.

The Heritage Foundation is dedicated to the principles of free competitive enterprise, limited government and individual liberty. No one here wishes “to co-opt public TV into its own service.” My own views have their origin in those of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1779 that “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

It is ironic that as the world sees that free speech and free markets go hand-in-hand, a respected privately owned newspaper would not at least fact-check Christensen’s dishonest ravings, or attempt to balance them with some commentary from another point of view. How would the publishers of The Times feel if the Feds were subsidizing a competing newspaper in Los Angeles, tied by financial strings to a Corporation for Public Newspapers and Congress? Would that be in the public interest?

LAURENCE JARVIK, Bradley Resident Scholar Heritage Foundation, Washington