Elimination of Dan Rather part of orchestrated Republican plan, PBS is next

BILL MOYERS: "They practice extraordinary media manipulation. They're the most secretive administration in my 70 years. And this whole attack on me is indicative of how when anyone rises up to speak an alternative truth, an alternative vision of reality, they try to discredit them. I mean, that?s been behind the 25 year attack on the mainstream media, on Dan Rather and others. I mean, sometimes mainstream media contribute to our own errors ? I mean, to our own downfall, because of our mistakes, but they have been trying to discredit the mainstream journalists for a long time so that their own right wing media can be accepted by their constituency, in particular, as the media. So I'm targeted because my reporting on "Now" was telling the stories that they didn't want told about secrecy in government, about Cheney's energy task forces, about a cover up at the Department of Interior, about the relationship between business, corporations, and the administration. We were reporting what good muckraking journalism always reports, and they don't like that. So that's why they?ve singled me out."

No less destructive is Mr. Tomlinson's bullying. Among other things, he hired a researcher to monitor the program Now with Bill Moyers for political bias and paid the researcher $14,170 -- without disclosing this to the CPB board. Surprise. The consultant, who had worked for 20 years at a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union, based his determination of political bias on whether a program happened to agree or not with administration policy. He even labeled Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a well-known conservative, as ''liberal'' because he was out of sync with the White House.

Better candidate

Not content to interfere with programming, Mr. Tomlinson has promoted the appointment of Patricia Harrison for the $170,000 job of chairman and chief executive of the public broadcasting agency. She has no previous broadcasting experience but was once co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. Apparently, that's all that matters.