The excerpt below is from a nice article on Reason about the funding battles in Congress over the political bent of PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Reason article points out that the CPB charter requires balance.

Republicans are strong in this funding debate when they raise the issue of balance.

Let’s use the phrase “Democrat” instead of liberal, and “Republican” instead of conservative, when characterizing the ideological bent of PBS programs, because that’s more honest.

PBS programs on science are not too controversial, but some tend to skew Democratic. One reason is because Republicans as a party oppose evolution, it seems. So any science program on any TV station other than religious TV stations is going to present evolution as being a bedrock scientific principle. According to real scientists, not religious scientists, evolution through natural selection is the law of the land, and no credible evidence exists to rebut it.

Global warming is a fact accepted by the scientific community, except for scientists funded by polluting corporations, and except for scientists aligned with the Republican Religious Right. In other words, those with a political ax to grind deny global warming exists. But real scientists who approach the evidence objectively do not deny global warming exists.

And so, is it “political” when PBS discusses global warming? Depends on which Party you belong to. Republicans accuse PBS of being political when all PBS is doing is presenting the real scientific opinions of the great majority of the world’s non-biased scientific community.

PBS programs on social issues, like documentaries and independent short films, skew Democratic. Those pieces seem to tend to advocate for Democratic-leaning points of view on whatever issue they address, so it seems to me. The Democratic leaning programs tend to focus on presenting the diversity of society in a favorable light.

PBS does not not tend to broadcast many social issue documentaries and short films from a radical Republican viewpoint. At least, I don’t recall any. But I recall plenty of documentaries oiver the years that favorably present things associated with Republican political ideas, like religion and patriotism and family life.

Let’s look at the news documentaries produced by such programs as Nova and Frontline. As a general rule, these programs overall seem to try to be fair in their presentation of the issues.

During Clintons’s reign, Frontline did investigations that made Clinton look bad. So if Frontline does that against Bush, they are just giving equal time. Frontline provides ample time for opposing viewpoints in its presentation, and looks at all the major issues from what seems to be a legitimate journalistic perspective.

Nova is a science program first and foremost. As a court famously said, “Science is what scientists do.” Real scientists do not do creationism, so Nova is not going to highlight that theory. Real scientists are convinced the evolution through natural selection is the law of the land, so Nova will discuss evolution-related topics from a friendly perspective.

Real scientists do space research, and ocean research, and volcano research, and Nova presents programs on all those topics.

Real scientists see overwhelming evidence of global warming, and Nova talks about that. Real scientists might differ on the major contributing factors that are leading to global warming, and Nova talks about those different viewpoints.

It’s hard to identify much in the way of political bias on Nova’s part. It’s isn’t bias to give credibility to scientists whose positions are accepted by the overwhelming majority of real scientists.

On the contrary, Nova would be accused of propaganda if Nova advocated for creationism, a decidedly very minority viewpoint in the worldwide scientific community.

Likewise, Nova would be accused of poor science if Nova presented creationism as a legitimate contender in the debate of ideas. Nova is not a religious program. Creationism is a religious philosophy and not a credible scientific theory. RadMod’s articles on science verses religion.

PBS also presents pure opinion programming. Of the pure opinion programming, most skews Democratic. This is troublesome for a publically funded organization. Republicans are on strong ground in demanding some compromise.

Reason: A Rumble on Sesame Street: Three lessons from the battle over public broadcasting
A Rumble on Sesame Street
Three lessons from the battle over public broadcasting
Jesse Walker

Ten years ago, the Gingrich Congress briefly toyed with the idea of defunding public broadcasting%u2014an event we all should remember, because our liberal friends and relatives are still e-mailing us petitions to stop it. According to The Nation, when the conservative PBS personality Ben Wattenberg heard that public TV might lose its federal support he said, “What! Just when we’ve taken it over?”