PBS apparently thinks we need even more right-wing talk shows
In what some claim is an effort to add “balance,” PBS is going to start broadcasting a show called Journal Editorial Report, which will serve as a platform for the right-wing views of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. In case, you know, the right-wing views that dominate the cable news channels and most of talk radio weren’t enough. Eric Alterman has the story.
Still, the insult of throwing up Carlson to quiet the whining of crybaby conservatives pales in comparison to the injury of offering up millions of dollars in taxpayer and viewer-donated resources of our public broadcasting service to the far-right ideologues behind the Journal Editorial Report. Short of turning the broadcast day over to Rush Limbaugh or Richard Mellon Scaife, it’s difficult to imagine a more calculated effort to undermine PBS’s intended mission of providing alternative programming than this subsidy to a wealthy, conservative corporation to produce yet another right-wing cable chat show.
Given the fact that the JER could probably find a happy home on any of the big cable news channels, or even on the Sunday morning schedules of the corporate-owned networks, which other PBS shows like NOW with Bill Moyers or Frontline most definitely could not, exactly what definition of alternative programming is PBS using?
