Bill Moyers - Allegations of Bias

Allegations of Bias

Bush-appointee Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson was a regular critic of Moyers; in 2003, he wrote to Pat Mitchell, the president of PBS, that " does not contain anything approaching the balance the law requires for public broadcasting." In 2005, Tomlinson commissioned a study of the show, without informing or getting authorization from the CPB board. Tomlinson said that the study supported what he characterized as "the image of the left-wing bias of NOW". George Neumayr, the executive editor of The American Spectator, a conservative magazine, told the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that "PBS looks like a liberal monopoly to me, and Bill Moyers is Exhibit A of that very strident left-wing bias... uses his show as a platform from which to attack conservatives and Republicans."

Moyers, who left the show in 2004 before returning in 2007, replied to this by saying that his journalism showed "the actual experience of regular people is the missing link in a nation wired for everything but the truth." Moyers characterized Tomlinson as "an ally of Karl Rove and the right-wing monopoly's point man to keep tabs on public broadcasting." Tomlinson, he said, "found kindred spirits at the right-wing editorial board of The Wall Street Journal where the 'animal spirits of business' are routinely celebrated." Moyers also responded to these accusations in a speech given to The National Conference for Media Reform, saying that he had repeatedly invited Tomlinson to debate him on the subject but had repeatedly been ignored. He spoke about this again a few months later in a speech called "Democracy, Secrecy and Ideology" upon the 20th anniversary of the National Security Archive.