Objective Analysis and the Constitutional Status of Public Broadcasting
FREEDOM BY DESIGN: OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING † JONATHAN M. PHILLIPS INTRODUCTION Since the 1980s, the institution of public broadcasting has been subject to continuing criticism, particularly by those who are con- cerned that it is ideologically biased.1 In 2005, public broadcasting was in the limelight yet again when it was discovered that the Chair- man of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Kenneth Tomlinson, secretly hired a consultant to monitor PBS programming for partisan biases.2 In the name of “balance,”3 Tomlinson’s project examined the programs of Bill Moyers, Tavis Smiley, and Diane Reihm, and rated their guests according to whether they were liberal or conservative.4 Related (and perhaps more obviously alarming) † B.A. 2002, University of Pennsylvania; M.Sc. 2003, London School of Economics and Political Science; J.D. Candidate 2007, University of Pennsylvania Law School. I’d like to thank Professor C. Edwin Baker for providing the inspiration for, and invalu- able comments on, this piece, and the entire staff of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review for their work on this Comment. Most importantly, I’d like to thank my fiancée and family for their support, particularly in listening to the rants that provided the ba- sis for this piece. All errors, of course, are my own. 1 See Editorial, Squelching Public Broadcasting, N.Y. TIMES, June 15, 2005, at A22 (noting Newt Gingrich’s efforts ten years before to eliminate funding for public broadcasting because of its “liberal bias,” and reporting on continuing attacks on the organization).
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