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PBS unfiltered
By Rory O’Connor
June 21— He says women want “to be listened to, protected
and amused” and “to be spanked vigorously every once in a
while.”
His “guilty fantasy” is “Hillary. Every time I see her
I think I could, you know, help.”
He thinks that if journalists carry guns, it makes them safer, and he
was prepared to “shoot first” and ask no questions in Iraq,
where “I could have done anything.”
And he noted at a PBS Annual meeting that television is “not a
good medium for spreading information to the general public.”
He’s the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, bow-tied poster
boy of the ascendant right, and his eponymous weekly public affairs
program “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered” debuts this week on that
same PBS system.
Presumably the new program, as with Carlson’s other shows (such
as CNN’s “Crossfire” and the late-and-unlamented “Spin
Room”) will refrain from any ill-fated attempts to spread information
to viewers.
Given his flippant, embarrassingly callow demeanor, reactionary (one
might even say radical) views, and stated disbelief in the more informational
aspects of public affairs programming, one might reasonably wonder why
Tucker Carlson was chosen to host a weekly public affairs program on
America’s only publicly-owned network.
Carlson does.
“The whole thing is confusing to me,” he recently told Newsday.
“I’m still confused by how the whole [world] works —
the stations, PBS, the Congress…”
Maybe his father can explain things to him.
After all, Richard Carlson used to head the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
which partially funds PBS, and also contributes to the production of
— you guessed it — “Tucker Carlson Unfiltered! Before
that, Richard headed the United States Information Agency, which presumably
explains the propaganda gene so prevalent in much of young Tuck’s
prior shouting… er, “reporting.”
Or maybe Tucker could read Ken Auletta’s recent New Yorker dissection
of public broadcasting’s latest conservative swerve. Auletta detailed
the current PBS and CPB tilt to the right, fostered by political pressure
from Bush appointees to the CPB board and Congressional allies. As a
result, public broadcasting’s powers-that-be handpicked Carlson
fills in order to ‘balance’ the hard-hitting journalism and
insufficiently conservative commentary on that other weekly PBS public
affairs program, “Now with Bill Moyers,” which of course has
never received a penny of support from CPB.
As detailed in the public broadcasting newspaper Current, two recently
appointed CPB Board members, Gay Hart Gaines and Cheryl Halpern, together
with their families, have given more than $816,000 to Republican causes
over the past fourteen years. And, as Common Cause reported in a little-noticed
news release last December, Gaines was a key fundraiser for Newt Gingrich
a decade ago, when the then-House speaker was actively campaigning to
defund CPB. Halpern meanwhile has suggested that CPB should be given
authority to impose accountability and penalties for broadcasts it deems
unbalanced — such as, presumably, “Now with Bill Moyers.”
CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson — Director of Voice of America for
two years during the Reagan Administration — has also weighed in,
telling Auletta that “it is absolutely critical for people on the
right to feel they have the same ownership stake in pubic television
as people on the left have.”
Confusion, connections and caveats aside, Carlson is an unlikely choice
for the position of House-Conservative-in-Charge at PBS, for any number
of reasons. Pre-eminent among them is the fact that many right-thinking
political operatives consider him to be too liberal to represent their
concerns — thus denying them that all-important feeling of ownership
that Tomlinson sees as common to “people on the left.” As
Tim Graham of the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center
put it, “If you took a poll of conservatives and said, which of
the following would you like to have a PBS show, he wouldn’t be
in the top three or four. Maybe he’s what PBS wants. He’s
not a red-meat thrower.” To which Carlson responds, “It’s
ludicrous. I’m the most conservative, slash, libertarian person
I know.”
It’s true, and to his credit, that Carlson is not doctrinaire.
He’s abandoned, for example, his earlier support of rightist positions
on issues as varied as the war in Iraq and the death penalty —
both of which he once favored. “I enjoy changing my mind based
on reality,” he told Newsday, “I can’t control whatever
vulgar, outdated stereotypes exist out there.” Carlson even went
so far as say he “didn’t know” if he will vote for Bush
this fall, given the situation in Baghdad.
Fear not, however — help is on the way for the ever-beleaguered
conservatives. Other right-wingers are waiting in the wings for their
PBS slot, including Paul Gigot, editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial
page, and conservative culture critic Michael Medved. And at the same
time, Bill Moyers is stepping back as host of “Now” after
the elections, and PBS plans to cut the duration of the hour-long program
in half starting in January, when it will be headlined by current co-host
David Brancaccio.
As for “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered,” which debuts this week
— what can we expect? “The standards are going to be pretty
clear — tell me something I don’t know and no lying,”
he says. They’re simple, but you rarely see that on TV, so it’s
harder than it sounds.”
Almost as hard as spreading information to the public.
Source: MediaChannel.org
Yemeni journalists fight for rights
By Nabil Sultan
Sana’a, Yemen, June 18 (IPS)— The Eastern Court in
Yemeni capital Sana’a suspended publication of the al-Shamoa weekly
for three months last week and sentenced its editor Abdulbasit al-Shameeri
to imprisonment for that period. He was also fined $2,800.
The editor had written about instances of corruption in the government.
The motto of his publication is “Towards a Country Free of Corruption.”
Al-Shameeri is not alone. Journalists are fighting for freedom of expression
in Yemen in the face of heavy odds.
The former editor of another weekly had been sentenced to three months
imprisonment last week. His two colleagues were given five months each.
All three were banned from writing further.
The three were sentenced over a report published in al-Asboo last year
on teenage sex and about some women who had married without the knowledge
of their fathers.
The information ministry filed a lawsuit against the three journalists
on the ground that publication of the report was “unethical.”
Jamal al-Jubee, the lawyer who acted for the journalists said the suit
filed by the ministry was “illegal” because neither the girls
nor their relatives sued the publication, and that nobody was hurt by
the publication of the report. His arguments were turned down. But in
the end the journalists were saved by presidential pardon.
The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate appealed to President Ali Abdallah
Saleh to cancel the sentences against the former editor Jalal al-Shara’abi
and his colleagues Naif Hussain and Faud al-Rabadi. Saleh cancelled
the court order following this petition..
The journalists syndicate said in its appeal to President Saleh that
harassment of journalists was rising dramatically, and that this threatens
freedom of the press and freedom of expression.
The syndicate added in relation to another case that a free media must
also be responsible, should not hurt others and must not violate the
law. This case arose from an article in the al-Ehya al-Arabi weekly,
mouthpiece of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party attacking the Saudi
regime.
The writer Abdul Jabar described those being pursued as al-Qaida militants
as mujahideen and martyrs. “How do you consider those militants
who fought for Islam and dignity as terrorists while you have an alliance
with enemies of Islam and Muslims like America?”
The writer added that “Saddam Hussein was the symbol of dignity
and honour and the ‘lock’ over unrest in the region, but you
broke it.”
The information ministry has sued the newspaper and the writer for propagating
terrorism and violence, and for harming Yemeni-Saudi relations.
“It is an irresponsible act, a violation of the law, a propagation
of extreme and deviant concepts,” the ministry said in its petition.
“It is an insult to Yemen’s relations with Saudi Arabia, which
compels legal measures to be taken against the newspaper and writer.”
In April the Western Court in Sana’a fined journalist Saeed Thabet
and banned him form writing for six months over a report that an officer
of the special forces tried to shoot Col. Ahmad Ali Abdullah Saleh,
son of President Saleh, and commander of the special forces. Thabet’s
report was denied by the authorities.
“For me the verdict is the equivalent of a death sentence,”
Thabet said in a comment on the verdict.
Thabet was arrested by the Political Security Organisation (PSO), the
state secret service, without any legal procedures. Thabet said later
the judicial system had failed to function independently and honestly.
At a meeting later Thabet, who is also deputy chairman of the journalists
syndicate demanded abolition of the ministry of information. “It
is a tool for repression, and the press law in Yemen is backward and
savage,” he said.
“Media should be the tool of the people in accordance with our
religion and morals,” he added. “We do not want absolute freedom,
but we want responsible freedom, not in front of the ruler but in front
of god and constitution.”
Mohammed Naji Allaw, head of the National Organisation for Defending
Rights and Freedoms says the judicial system is linked too closely with
the executive. “It is quite common to see the judicial system follow
the government in everything it says,” Allaw told IPS.
The independent Journalism Freedom Protection and Training Center has
condemned the actions against journalists. The sentences passed against
the journalists “bring more fear to the future of journalism and
freedom of opinion and expression in Yemen,” it said.
“At the time when advocates, activists, journalists and civil society
organisations inside and outside the country were awaiting a decision
which rebuilds the reputation of the judiciary in Yemen, they were shocked
by the verdicts against journalism,” the Center added.
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