PBS is doing the Right Thing
Monday, May 09, 2005
(SNN) According to internal polls, the Public Broadcasting Service has a few things to be proud of. Now it’s time to destroy it.
Over the Iraq war, only 7% of respondents thought that the coverage was slanted.
Internal polls at PBS have shown that most watchers do not believe that PBS is biased. In a 2002 poll over the Iraq war, only 7% of respondents thought that the coverage was slanted. Furthermore, only 21 percent of respondents think that PBS showed an overall liberal bias. While only 12 percent of viewers believe PBS has a conservative bias, it should be noted that conservatives are statistically much more likely to complain about media bias.
In addition to this, a strong majority of Americans believe, and studies have shown, that PBS news coverage is more accurate and in depth than ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN. Almost half of Americans would like to see PBS get more funding while only ten percent would like to see it get less. It just doesn’t get better than this.
Rather than stop at having the majority of PBS viewers just believe that PBS isn’t liberally biased, new CPB chairman Kenneth Tomlinson wants to take the network in a different direction and give it an explicitly conservative bias.
Five year olds are really amused by how stupid Tucker Carlson looks in a bow tie.
But some people say the PBS audience isn’t really interested in political shows, pointing out that the average age of a PBS viewer is 78, if you do not include viewers under 8. If you only include viewers under 50, the average viewer age is 5. Proponents of Tomlinson’s reign say that 5 year olds are really amused by how stupid Tucker Carlson looks in a bow tie.
Last year, Tomlinson used his influence to bring on two new shows, "Tucker Carlson Unfiltered" and "The Journal Editorial Report" to balance out the liberal bias of Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. This angered viewers who had to deal with diminished episodes of “Keeping Up Appearances” and the “Big Comfy Couch” and one less Three Tenors special.
Also, next year a new kids’ show “Greenback” will preview to compete with the popular “Wishbone”. In the show, Greenback, a cute dog, learns the lessons of personal responsibility as his decrepit owner becomes a migrant farm worker rather than leech off the welfare system of Social Security.
