Whose agenda is it anyway?

Perennially cash-strapped public television producers and filmmakers would ordinarily be thrilled that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting recently unveiled a long-awaited initiative to fund $20 million worth of documentaries on post-Sept. 11 terrorist attack themes. Instead, a recent forum in New York where the organization’s executives explained more precisely what kinds of programs they are seeking for “America at a Crossroads” turned into a shouting and name-calling session.

One producer drew sustained applause from many of the 275 or so attendees for complaining that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was “asking me to do the bidding of the Pentagon.” An employee of the National Black Programming Consortium noted “this whole thing stinks,” as he criticized a focus on the “Anglo-American world order” by an expert panel of white men who were brought in to suggest documentary topics. That led Walter Russell Mead, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who had been invited to discuss American foreign policy, to snap back sarcastically: “We’re evilly trying to destroy public debate.... We got our instructions this morning.”

When producer Rory O’Connor called the presentation “tone deaf” and “offensive,” because “I come here to find five white men when you say you are seeking balance and diversity,” panelist Max Boot, also a council fellow, sniped that the audience had “a narrow, one-dimensional definition of diversity.” He was shouted down.

The fight, which one veteran producer later called “fairly sophomoric name-calling,” brought into the open tensions that have been brewing inside the noncommercial public television world for the last year, starting with the February 2003 appointment of independent filmmaker Michael Pack to oversee the TV programming budget of the corporation that administers federal funding for public broadcasting.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funnels most of the money directly to local radio and TV stations, which then pay for shows from programmers such as the Public Broadcasting Service. But the corporation also controls its own influential programming money. The appointment of Pack -- whose own films have explored such topics as “The Fall of Newt Gingrich,” “The Rodney King Incident: Race and Justice in America” and most recently the debate over the role of faith-based organizations in providing social services -- was viewed by many as part of a move to swing public television to a more conservative stance, in the face of loud criticism from some in Congress that public television has been pushing a liberal agenda.

An old debate

Political balance in public broadcasting is an old debate, reflecting the broader political and cultural wars that rage regularly, but it flared up with the return of Republican control of the White House, at the same time that PBS gave a prominent new weekly public affairs program to Bill Moyers. His Friday night “Now” series has been a lightning rod for critics who complain that Moyers has a liberal bias on issues.

Starting June 18, PBS will attempt to balance the equation by adding a Friday series hosted by CNN’s bow-tied, generally conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, whose father, Richard Carlson, is a former Corporation for Public Broadcasting president. Moyers, meanwhile, has announced he will retire from the show after the November election. Still, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is expected to undergo Senate Commerce Committee reauthorization hearings in May, with the issue of objectivity and balance front and center.

Objectivity and balance came up at the November Senate confirmation hearing for two new Corporation for Public Broadcasting board members. One, Republican appointee Cheryl Halpern, raised eyebrows when she talked about the contradiction in the Public Broadcasting Act, which requires shows to be objective and balanced but prohibits the corporation from interfering with the content of programming other than deciding whether to fund it. Some took her remarks to mean that she thought the corporation needed to have more power to reign in producers who don’t provide balance in their shows.

The ideological battles raging across the country help explain the current tensions, said Corporation for Public Broadcasting President Robert Coonrod. He also acknowledged that Pack’s appointment has caused some unease because he has a “worldview that’s a little different from some in public television.” Pack, he said, “is an independent producer who is by his own admission a Republican and a conservative. I don’t ask producers what their politics are, but by and large I believe people who produce for public television tend to be more liberal than not.”

Moreover, Coonrod said, “there are people who would generally be categorized as on the conservative side of the spectrum who feel public television isn’t as fair as they’d like, that the values they think important are not reflected. We have an obligation to hear those people” by including “more voices,” not excluding those such as Moyers’.

However, “America at a Crossroads,” Coonrod said, was conceived not to bring more balance to public television but to make it more “relevant” to viewers. He said Pack has brought a welcome new perspective. “He has been talking to people that have never been talked to by people in public television before, and it will be interesting to try to engage them somehow. The trick ... is to make really good programming out of this.”

Personal views irrelevant

In his first public interviews in his more than a year on the job, Pack declined to identify his political views, saying they aren’t relevant as to whether he can be a fair programmer.

He said the “America at a Crossroads” initiative -- and another pending project to improve students’ knowledge of U.S. history -- resulted from his extensive conversations with station executives, academics and independent producers and was designed to “raise the level of public debate about an important subject.”

In its official plan, the corporation says it wants programs that address issues such as “the duration and direction of the war on terrorism, the use of American power against states that harbor terrorists, preemptive military action, unilateralism, American’s international role and image, regime change, homeland security” and “civil liberties conflicts.”

Pack, whose title is senior vice president for television programming, said he hopes to find proposals for shows that are unusual enough to “break through” what he said is “Sept. 11 fatigue,” adding “we are challenging the producing community to approach those topics in a different way.” Pack, and panels he has assembled, have invited filmmakers to discuss “America at a Crossroads” in San Francisco next Monday and in Los Angeles on March 31.

Pack defended his choices of panelists for the New York gathering but insisted there was no intention to muzzle certain opinions. “We are committed to reflecting a diversity,” he told the New York crowd. “I think public television needs to be more controversial. Part of the point of this initiative is to expand the debate.” He added that proposals seeking funding “can have strong points of view. And obviously in this room there are strong points of view.”

Later, calling the fears of some producers “groundless,” he said that “people can hold me accountable” and that “I want this process to be transparent and open.” The advisory board for the project will soon be posted on the corporation website.

Not everyone was convinced, producer O’Connor said later. “They handed out a piece of paper that said they want to ensure political and philosophical balance and diversity, but I didn’t get any answer when I asked how they were going to ensure that.”

Cara Mertes, executive director of the PBS documentary series “P.O.V.,” said she hopes the initiative will reflect “the same richness in funding choices” that corporation-funded projects have shown in the past, but she added, “My concern is that consolidating most of CPB’s production funding under one framework, the post-9/11 role of America in the world, may limit CPB’s capacity to encourage a full spectrum of new and vigorous approaches to media-making for public broadcasting.”

Attendee Cal Skaggs, president of Lumiere Productions, whose credits include PBS’ “Local News,” had a different take. He said he has bristled in the last year at the criticism directed at Moyers and thought Pack could have assembled a more diverse panel. But he defended Pack, noting “I don’t think he is a narrow right-wing ideologue whatsoever,” adding, “I was really embarrassed by some of the questioners -- they seemed to me ill informed and they seemed to me knee-jerk. They seemed to me to be, rather than asking questions, taking positions that I thought were irrelevant.

“I do take him at his word. And until proven otherwise, I think other people should. Let’s submit the most left-wing thing we can think of but really well done, thoughtful and well-researched. And then if all of those are turned down, then convict the guy.”