Frank Rich has a must-read article on the creepy goings on with the Bush administration and its paid monitoring of public broadcasting. Can you say "enemies list?" The long and short of it is that Bush's new chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting apparently paid an Indiana man named Fred Mann more than $14,000 to monitor the programs of Bill Moyers, Tavis Smiley and Diane Rehm. Rich picks it up from here:
Their guests were rated either L for liberal or C for conservative, and "anti-administration" was affixed to any segment raising questions about the Bush presidency. Thus was the conservative Republican Senator Chuck Hagel given the same L as Bill Clinton simply because he expressed doubts about Iraq in a discussion mainly devoted to praising Ronald Reagan. Three of The Washington Post's star beat reporters (none of whom covers the White House or politics or writes opinion pieces) were similarly singled out simply for doing their job as journalists by asking questions about administration policies.
"It's pretty scary stuff to judge media, particularly public media, by whether it's pro or anti the president," Senator Dorgan said. "It's unbelievable."
Indeed. Definitely worth reading it all. |
