Jun 18 2005

Bureaucratic Minutiae

Published by at 6:42 am under All General Discussions

The NY Times has a ridiculous story out today trying to imply wrong doing at PBS now that it is under new management and being required to [shudder] reflect all of America! Perish the thought NY City Liberals have to deal with anyone out in fly over country. Before going to read the article, realize the whole issue is whether a candidate for the PBS Ombudsman position had emails sent to her before she came on board to take the position. Previously she worked at the White House.

Listen to the breathelessness of of the reporting as the NYTimes tries to create a scandal out of thin air:

E-mail messages obtained by investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting show that its chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, extensively consulted a White House official shortly before she joined the corporation about creating an ombudsman’s office to monitor the balance and objectivity of public television and radio programs.

Mr. Tomlinson said in an interview three months ago that he did not think he had instructed a subordinate to send material on the ombudsman project to Mary C. Andrews at her White House office
….
But the e-mail messages show that a month before the interview, he directed Kathleen Cox, then president of the corporation, to send material to Ms. Andrews at her White House e-mail address.

A senior corporation executive who is concerned about its direction under Mr. Tomlinson provided copies of the e-mail messages to The New York Times. Fearing retribution, the executive insisted on anonymity as a condition for providing the copies.

Ooops. There are those darn journalistic standards for you. I guess to be ‘journalists’ they had to divulge the fact that this investigation was kicked off by some partisan hack who wants to get Tomlinson bogged down in a scandal. What, pray tell, is wrong with someone working on some projects before they complete their move from one government post to another? The article even states this as the case later, after multiple paragraphs of hype and democrat Senator concerns.

The e-mail messages are part of the evidence being collected in a broad inquiry by the inspector general of the corporation into whether Mr. Tomlinson violated any rules that require that the corporation act as a buffer between politics and programming.

I can’t believe they NY Times could put this out with a straight face. If that was truly a rule at PBS Moyers should have been fired decades ago.

Give it a rest NY Times and PBS partisans – there are serious issues which need attention.

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