Funny (Tragic) Lead Of The Day

From WaPo, covering the resignation of former chair Kenneth Tomlinson from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting board:

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who sparked controversy by asserting that programs carried by public broadcasters have a liberal bias, resigned yesterday from the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting a day after the agency's inspector general delivered a report apparently critical of his leadership.

I can think of few things less controversial than an assertion that public broadcasting is left-leaning, except perhaps that CBS and CNN are left-leaning.

Considerably more viscious than WaPo was MediaCitizen Timothy Carr's lefty media blog:

Tomlinson has left behind a coterie of GOP hacks who have occupied the offices of an agency that was put in place by Congress to act as a "heat shield" -- protecting public broadcasting producers from the hot political winds of Washington. Tomlinson and his right-wing colleagues -- including new board chair Cheryl Halpern and president Patricia Harrison -- have turned the CPB's "heat shield" into their political blow torch.

It's really amazing. When conservatives try to just pull the pendulum back to the middle from the far-left position Clinton left it in, they are accused of all sorts of political extremism. There are seven people on the CPB foard now. Carr is able to name two remaining Republicans. Do the math; how far to the right has it been pushed?

Tomlinson was forced out for doing what a board member of a public broadcasting company should be expected to do. He thought there was bias, and he investigated to see if he could verify the bias. That his investigation did, indeed, find bias tends to get overlooked in the coverage.

h/t media bistro