In Battle Over PBS, It's "Conservatives" vs. "Others"
 

     A prominent front-page story by John Tierney and Jacques Steinberg is titled "Conservatives and Rivals Press a Struggling PBS." Beyond the loaded headline is typical slanted labeling from the Times, with conservatives slapped with warning brands and liberal activists left unmarked.

     Though the word "liberal" appears twice in the story, it's never used to identify PBS or a liberal defender of PBS but only as a charge made by Republicans: "Corporate underwriters have been less willing to finance PBS programs, which has left the network increasingly dependent on Washington, where Republicans criticize its programming as elitist and liberal." And later: "One high-level executive at PBS headquarters in Washington, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation for PBS, said new managers at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had been concerned about a perceived liberal bias at PBS as well as difficulties in fund-raising."

     Tierney and Steinberg note: "Conservatives have complained about Bill Moyers's news program (he has since retired from it) and about a recent children's program featuring a rabbit named Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents….[PBS President Pat Mitchell] said her programmers had worked with their counterparts at the corporation, which is led by White House appointees, in developing several new shows, including a talk show for the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson."

     A PBS critic from the right (from the Media Research Center, which sponsors Times Watch) is slapped with a conservative label: "Some critics, like Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, are reluctant to give PBS any independent endowment. 'They want to create an empire that does not have to answer to the Congress or the people,' Mr. Graham said. 'Conservatives do not want to give more tax dollars to television stations that attack their ideas.'"

     A PBS defender is also given the "conservative" imprimatur: "But there are some sympathetic conservatives, at least among the advisers on the Digital Future Initiative committee created by Ms. Mitchell, which met Wednesday in Washington to contemplate how PBS could put a trust fund to use. Norman Orenstein, a committee member who also sits on the PBS board, said Republicans on the committee believed that a trust fund could pay for socially useful programming. 'We're focusing on education and children and making the case that public broadcasting can do valuable things in a digital age that no one else can or will do,' said Mr. Orenstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group."

     Not only does the Times misspell the name of the oft-quoted AEI scholar (it's Norm Ornstein, not "Orenstein"), he's not all that conservative, either.

     Meanwhile, liberal activists aren't "liberal" -- they're merely "other" critics: "PBS is also being criticized by others, like Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a longtime advocate of more money for public television."

To read the rest of Tierney and Steinberg on PBS's woes, click here:

Women in Science vs. "Little Eichmanns" 
 

     Media reporter David Carr makes the front page of Thursday's Arts section with "Amid the Firestorm, A Portrait Of Harvard," his profile of journalist Richard Bradley and his new book on Harvard president Larry Summers. Of course, Carr recounts the controversy over Summer's recent remarks on women and science: "But last month, Dr. Summers suggested that the low number of women in the sciences had something to do with genetics and gender -- insert firestorm here -- and suddenly a book that would not seem to have any appeal beyond Harvard Square began to take on national resonance….The burgeoning crisis nicely dovetailed with the thesis of 'Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World's Most Powerful University.'"

     Though Carr's report is somewhat critical of Bradley's book, calling it "remarkably personal," the Times' prominent coverage of the book continues to hype comments made by Summers suggesting the low number of women in science may have something to do with genetics and the resulting firestorm from feminist academics. Since Summers made the remarks in mid-January, the Times has found no detail from Harvard Yard too small to report.

     Education reporter Sara  Rimer's report on a hostile faculty meeting at Harvard made page A14 of yesterday's edition. The February 4 "Harvard Seeks to Advance Opportunities for Women" referenced Summers' remarks in the first sentence. Back on January 24 there was the front-page story, "Gray Matter and the Sexes: Still a Scientific Gray Area." In all, the Times devoted seven stories in its national news section to the matter -- not bad for off-the-record remarks from a college president (even a Harvard one) speaking at an economics conference.

     Contrast that with the marginal coverage of the truly inflammatory remarks made by Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose recent invitation to speak at Hamilton College in New York state was embroiled in controversy over his essay in which he referred to the World Trade Center victims as ''little Eichmanns.''

     Though Churchill's rant was several orders of magnitude more controversial than Summers' remarks about women and science, the Times didn't get overly worked up, relegating the ongoing controversy to several Metro section dispatches. As for its national news pages, the Times made do with a single February 11 story by Kirk Johnson, which  actually fretted about the possible chilling effect the controversy might have on academic inquiry: "Many students interviewed on campus in recent days said they feared that the lines being drawn around Professor Churchill were also creating boundaries about what could be freely and safely talked about in the United States."

     Funny, but the Times showed no such concern for what "could be freely and safely talked about" in academia when Summers was attacked by feminists.

For the rest of Carr's report, click here: