NYT: Ombudsmen Rebuff Move by Public Broadcasting

[DeepModem Mom]

Ombudsmen Rebuff Move by Public Broadcasting
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: May 30, 2005


LONDON, May 27 - An association of news ombudsmen has rejected an attempt by two ombudsmen from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to join their organization as full-fledged members, questioning their independence.

The Organization of News Ombudsmen, which represents nearly a hundred print and broadcast ombudsmen from around the world, more than half of them in the United States, voted at its annual conference here last week to change its bylaws to allow full membership only to those who work for news organizations. The corporation, a quasi-governmental organization, provides some federal funds for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System; it does not itself gather or produce news.

The change allows for the corporation's ombudsmen - and others in allied fields but who are not part of a news organization - to become associate members. As such, they are denied voting privileges and the stamp of legitimacy as independent ombudsmen that full membership would suggest.

"We want members who are responsive to readers, not to governments or lobby groups," said Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, who was president of the ombudsmen's organization until last week when his term ended and is the ombudsman for NPR. "I was worried about the political nature of the appointment and I was worried about the precedent."

The move is a rebuff to Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the corporation, who decided that the corporation should have two ombudsmen as a way to bring balance to what he sees as a liberal bias in public programming and an anti-Israeli bias in NPR's Middle East coverage. (A survey by the corporation itself has shown that viewers and listeners do not share those perceptions.)...


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/business/media/30paper.html

[lala_rawraw]

1. He loves Joe M too

<snip>
So it goes.

The prejudices sweep away antecedent history. Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the CPB, was editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest. What would you expect to get from him, if not a reactionary prism on world affairs?

Get it?

Well, Salon.com gets it right away. The Salon people improve on it. They discover that Tomlinson was an intern for the late Fulton Lewis Jr. Who was Lewis? He was “a reactionary radio personality associated with Sen. Joe McCarthy.” Need one say more?

No, not really. But let’s say more because it tastes real good. “In a 1996 interview, poet Allen Ginsberg recalled how Lewis in the ’50s held special disdain for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of espionage for the Soviets and executed. ‘There was one commentator on the air, called Fulton Lewis, who said that they smelt bad and therefore should die. There was an element of anti-Semitism in it,’ Ginsberg said.”

So in no time at all, Tomlinson is taken from head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting back to editor of the reactionary Reader’s Digest, back to intern for Fulton Lewis, who disdained the Rosenbergs and struck the poet Ginsberg as anti-Semitic in his expression of that disdain.
http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley.shtml

[high density]

2. What liberal bias?!

I wish we could reset the meters in the USA as to what liberal bias is. The Republicans have been whining about this "liberal bias" crap for decades and I don't see how the media could possibly get any more right-wing at this moment in time.

[Clark2008]

3. Liberal bias is that make-believe bias that makes wingers push

us further and further to the abyss.

[LuPeRcALiO]

4. 'liberal bias' is Walter Cronkite remembering the JFK assassination

Either that or the female newsreaders.

[cornermouse]

5. This is probably a dumb question, but is there some way

we could use this to push into airtime on those stations which do air malicious people like Limbaugh?

[Gyre]

6. What 'anti-Israeli bias'?

They do more pieces on Jewish Americans and Israelis, cast in a favorable light, than any other news outlet outside of Israel. You want klezmer music; where ya gonna go? NPR.

Chimpco just wants fewer stories on Palestinians so they can demonize them easier.

Gyre

[lostnfound]

7. This is a good thing, right? nt

[me b zola]

8. Ha!

A smack in the face to the con take-over of PBS. From the article:

>>>"The nature of ONO could be changed by a flood of inappropriate members," said Ian Mayes, the readers' editor at The Guardian in London and incoming president of the ombudsmen's group. (The organization goes by its acronym, which corresponds to the cry of "oh, no" that ombudsmen say they imagine reporters and editors uttering as the ombudsman approaches.) Adjusting the rules for membership, Mr. Mayes said, "is what all organizations do to maintain their integrity."

Mr. Mayes said the organization was in a "transitional state" as it was growing internationally - even Izvestia in Russia is considering hiring an ombudsman. As the organization expands into parts of the world with repressive governments and fragile democracies, he said, it has to be careful not to confer legitimacy on anyone who did not share its standards and independence.<<<