The Buffoonery of 'Balance'

In Washington, the noisiness of a debate tends to be inversely proportional to its actual importance.

Thus, there's a war raging in Iraq with dozens dying weekly, and the discussion is muted and hard to notice, like a soft conversation in another room. Meanwhile, the political class is making a huge racket about the dangers of public broadcasting. Yes, the folks who bring us This Old House and Car Talk are under scrutiny as a possible threat to the nation's well-being.

Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is the central player and fomenter of this particular noisy debate. The CPB is a private, nonprofit entity created by Congress in 1967 to fund public radio and television around the country. Its founding statute calls for the CPB to ensure "objectivity and balance" in its content, and Tomlinson has been focusing zealously on those words. A former editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest, he told The New York Times that, in his view, the phrase means "a program schedule that's not skewed in one direction or another." Like many conservatives, he sees a leftward slant to some public-broadcasting content, and has gone after it, while also overseeing the creation of new right-ish shows for balance.

The argument first heated up last year, and so many little dustups followed that it would take a whole column to review them all. One concerned a cartoon rabbit's visit to a Vermont lesbian couple on the PBS kids' travel show, Postcards From Buster.

In a bigger dustup, Tomlinson didn't like the liberalism of the television show Now with Bill Moyers. According to The New York Times, Tomlinson secretly hired a conservative consultant to monitor the show. Moyers left Now in December, but has been firing away at Tomlinson in various venues.

Meanwhile, Tomlinson's activities are being scrutinized on Capitol Hill and by the CPB inspector general, and lately there have been Democratic calls for his resignation. At the same time, funding for public broadcasting has come under the knife on Capitol Hill. Although Tomlinson opposes the proposed cuts, they've added fuel to the larger CPB fire.

It has all started to feel like a Gilbert and Sullivan show, with Tomlinson as Lord High Executioner ("Defer, Defer, to the Lord High Executioner!") and the other cast members scurrying around him in fear and outrage.

But as with many noisy Washington brouhahas, what's most interesting is not the outward substance of the debate. Public broadcasting is the eternal political football. Richard Nixon was as worked up about it three decades ago as Tomlinson is today.

Far more intriguing is the political gamesmanship behind the CPB debate, particularly Tomlinson's decision to wage this crusade at all. Superficially, it looks kind of smart—lots of media attention, several little victories, lusty cheers from conservatives. But take a few steps back, and the calculation doesn't seem quite so savvy:

1) The Steam Valve Argument. There's no question that a lot of the content on public radio and television has a liberal tinge. Very little of it is overtly political, but there's a definite cultural liberalism in the subject choice and tone of many shows. Just the phrase "Vermont lesbians" speaks to a whole worldview, and it's a view that many conservatives don't like one bit. But is it wise for them to weaken or eradicate that view?

With conservatives controlling all three branches of the government, public broadcasting serves as a kind of steam valve for liberals, a place where they can go and feel that the Bushies are not really taking over the planet. Obviously, this is good for liberals, but in a practical way it's also very good for conservatives. After all, public broadcasting doesn't pose any real threat to their power—Bill Moyers looms pretty small—and it assuages liberal discontent. In other words, Republicans should recognize that culturally liberal broadcasting has real value, of the Machiavellian kind, for them. Turn it off, and you might turn on a whole new protest movement. Indeed, media activists already have a new cause, and Tomlinson handed it to them.

2) Balance Is Out There. The "objectivity and balance" clause is outdated. The idea of striving for perfect balance within a given media outlet—offsetting each liberal jot with a conservative tittle—has been a total bust. Ideological bean-counting yields dull media. As any free-market Republican should know, the key to better media is competition between outlets. Whatever liberal cast there is to some public radio or television shows is already balanced by the marketplace. It's called Fox News.

3) They're Already Centrists. Public radio and television have been moving to the middle of the political spectrum for years. Partly, it's about a desire for a larger audience and greater impact. But it's also about the need for corporate sponsors. Back in the '80s, National Public Radio was derisively known in certain quarters as Radio Managua. That image doesn't fly with big-time corporate sponsors like Archer Daniels Midland on which public radio now depends. Throughout public broadcasting, knee-jerk leftism is history. Oddly enough, the one person who might bring it back is President Bush's guy at the CPB.