Tomlinson has tipped his hand in the past. In the Nov. 17, 2003, issue of Current magazine, which covers public broadcasting, he argued, "If a significant number of conservatives are saying public TV is not for them, we need to change that" (emphasis added).

So if a significant number of environmentalists, or libertarians or Latinos or Asians, say public TV is not for them, will the CPB be willing to take drastic action to remedy that perception? And what constitutes a "significant number"? According to CPB polling done in 2003, 12 percent of Americans think PBS has a conservative bias. Why isn't the CPB board addressing that as well?

"They've established their own version of political correctness," says Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "Tomlinson is taking things to the extreme with his ambitious agenda."

In fact, the CPB's crusade seems to flip on its head the organization's mandate, which, following Nixon's attempt at political interference, has been to act as PBS's "heat shield," insulating PBS programming from outside political pressure. Instead, the CPB is demanding programming changes to meet its political concerns.

The CPB was created and funded by Congress to provide about 20 percent of PBS's programming budget. Under the Public Broadcasting Act, the White House can appoint no more than five of the nine CPB board seats. One of the Democratic seats is unfilled, as it has been for several years, giving Republicans a comfortable decision-making majority.

During an interview for NPR's "On the Media," which aired over the weekend, Tomlinson insisted, "I did not choose to bring controversy to public broadcasting over the issue of balance. Others did." Yet recent events certainly suggest Tomlinson and his Bush-appointed allies on the CPB board have been fixated on the issue of balance.

  • Last year CPB handpicked two new conservative-leaning programs to balance out the alleged liberal bias on PBS: "Tucker Carlson Unfiltered," hosted by the conservative pundit, and "The Journal Editorial Report," featuring the uniformly pro-Bush editors from the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. The two shows became perhaps the first in CPB history to be greenlighted specifically because they had an overt political perspective. That kind of micromanaging of the program schedule ought to be off-limits, says former board member Carpenter: "The board should not get involved in individual programming decisions. That's outside its purview."

  • Without the knowledge of his board, Tomlinson last year contracted with an outside consultant -- at a cost of $10,000 -- to monitor the weekly PBS news program "Now With Bill Moyers" for liberal bias, according to a report in the New York Times.

  • Late last year CPB suggested that PBS's long-established journalism standards were inadequate and urged it to alter the wording of its "objectivity and balance" guidelines.

  • In March, Tomlinson hired a White House staffer to help draft guidelines for the new positions of PBS ombudsmen, who would specifically monitor bias in programming.

  • Last month, without informing PBS first, CPB appointed the ombudsmen. One of the men last year publicly endorsed a Republican for governor in Indiana, and the other, a self-described conservative, is a close friend of Tomlinson's.

  • CPB shocked the public broadcasting community on April 8 by refusing to renew the contract of its chief executive officer, Kathleen Cox. She was replaced with Ken Ferree, a Republican who was a top advisor to Michael Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and who helped Powell craft new rules that would have drastically loosened media-ownership rules.

  • Finally, Tomlinson wants to tap the former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, Patricia Harrison, to step in as the permanent CEO.

    • "People feel like this is a mission for him," says one public-television source. Adds another veteran, "Everybody's scared to death."

    What's especially curious about the current objectivity controversy is that PBS airs hundreds of hours of programming each week, most of which is educational and cultural, and yet CPB's entire fairness and balance campaign -- dismissing its CEO, creating new shows, trying to rewrite PBS's journalism guidelines, hiring ombudsmen -- appears to stem from a single weekly program, Moyers' "Now." "All they talk about is the Moyers show," notes Carpenter. "Where else is the bias or the perceived bias?"

    Moyers left the show (which has since been cut back to just 30 minutes) months ago, yet conservative media critics, rather than celebrate his departure, continue to rally against Moyers with a vengeance. In his May 6 attack on PBS posted online, Brent Bozell dedicated nearly half his column to attacking Moyers and detailing his alleged bias (for example, criticizing Condoleezza Rice's "pattern of ineptness").

    Even when Moyers hosted the show, which routinely aired critical reports about the Bush administration, "Now" wasn't exactly a lightning rod for viewers' wrath. According to an attachment to CPB's annual report to Congress, CPB, eager for public feedback, created "Open to the Public," an interactive forum in which viewers can express concerns. For calendar year 2003, the most recent year for which statistics are publicly available, the initiative produced 1,139 e-mails from viewers. According to CPB, just 24 of those -- or roughly 2 percent -- were angry e-mails about "Now." (Drawing the most comments was "Sit and Be Fit," an exercise program for seniors; viewers e-mailed asking that it be shown on more local stations.) While individual PBS stations may have logged more complaints about "Now," CPB's own feedback mechanism barely registered any concern about the program.

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