Facinating story about how PorkBS screwed a Monkey in order to shovel money to Ted Turner. Also an election night celebration.
Non profit does not mean non lucrative.
WSJ:
July 28, 1999
PBS: Political Bias Scandal
By Laurence Jarvik, author of "Masterpiece Theatre and the Politics of Quality" (Scarecrow Press, 1999) and "PBS: Behind the Screen" (Prima, 1997).
Last May the Boston Globe carried what at first glance seemed to be a minor human-interest story. After the mother of a four-year-old boy mailed $40 to PBS station WGBH in Boston to thank the station for "Barney," she received a request for money from the Democratic National Committee. The woman, a Republican lawyer, complained about the solicitation to the station and discovered that WGBH had traded mailing lists with the DNC.
Since then, the story has grown into a full-blown scandal, in which the three largest Public Broadcasting Service stations--WGBH, Boston (which produces "Masterpiece Theatre," "Nova," "Frontline" and "The American Experience"); WNET, New York ("Nature," "Great Performances," "Charlie Rose"); and WETA, Washington ("The Newshour With Jim Lehrer," "Washington Week in Review")--are all implicated. Congressional hearings have revealed that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the federally funded body that is supposed to ensure the "integrity" and "excellence" of PBS, is unable to exercise credible oversight of the money it disburses--and is not even willing to try. What this means is that America's "public" broadcasters have been left to operate in a shroud of secrecy, within which they run some very profitable--and partisan--organizations.
Despite the claims of some of their spokesmen, PBS stations were not driven to raise funds from DNC donors by financial necessity. Combined public broadcasting revenues exceed $2 billion annually. But this information isn't easy to obtain since, unlike publicly held companies, public broadcasting stations do not file financial disclosure documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and, unlike federal agencies, they are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
Occasionally, however, there are glimmerings of the way PBS management operates. One such instance concerns Michael Nesmith, a former band member of the Monkees, who this month settled his lawsuit against PBS for an undisclosed sum after a Los Angeles jury had awarded him $47 million in damages. Mr. Nesmith, the founder of a home-video distribution company, had been sued by PBS for unpaid royalties after the network cancelled his contract and awarded its home-video business to Ted Turner's distribution company, now Warner Home Video.
Mr. Nesmith countersued, arguing that he had absorbed the risks of building a new business only to see it manipulated away from him by PBS insiders before he could either turn a profit or even declare bankruptcy. In February, the jury found PBS liable for intentional misrepresentation, concealment, negligent misrepresentation and intentional interference with Mr. Nesmith's company. One courtroom observer said the Los Angeles jury, apparently familiar with Hollywood disputes, sent a message that PBS had behaved no better than any commercial network.
The Nesmith story is no anomaly. Instead, it is symptomatic of PBS's arrogance and sharp dealing. And perhaps no station in the system blends the two as seamlessly as Boston's WGBH.
WGBH is just one station in a system with 353 outlets. But as the richest and most prestigious broadcaster, it is PBS's flagship, and its actions set the tone for the entire system. The station has more than 1,000 employees (some 100 work in fund-raising alone), more than Boston's ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates combined. With annual revenues of more than $211 million for 1997, it pays its president, Henry P. Becton Jr., a salary of $199,000--more than any congressman, Supreme Court justice or cabinet secretary makes. Best of all for WBGH, as a nonprofit corporation, its revenues are tax-free.
Yet for all this, WGBH and its president have not been content with their success. Rather, Mr. Brecton has placed the station squarely within a lucrative web of interlocking directorates of private for-profit and nonprofit companies. So, for example, Mr. Becton sits on the board of PBS, and its president, Ervin Duggan, reports to him in that capacity. But WGBH is also a partner in the American Program Service, distributor of "Nightly Business Report" and other programs that appear on public television.. It owns 3% of the Learningsmith chain of toy stores, which sell educational toys. It is a partner in the PBS Sponsorship Group, a joint underwriting sales operation with WNET, WETA and KCET (Los Angeles); a partner in National Public Television, a private firm headed by cable advertising mogul Bob Williams that sells spots on local PBS stations; and a partner with Cinar Animation and Random House in the "Arthur" television series.
WGBH also owns a piece of the Omnimax film "Special Effects" shown at IMAX theatres; gets a share of revenues from the sale of its documentaries to Hollywood producers looking for story lines; and sits with WNET and other PBS stations on the publication committee for Current, the PBS trade journal. WGBH also receives lucrative contracts to provide closed captioning and descriptive video for Hollywood films and television programs and grants from an alphabet soup of federal agencies.
Many programs are not made in-house, but co-produced with private production companies, which are profit participants. Producers at the station enjoy opportunities to profit personally, as well. "Frontline" producer David Fanning receives a percentage of fees paid for documentary stories sold to Home Box Office and Hollywood studios. Producer Russell Morash, who owns a portion of "The New Yankee Workshop," receives an undisclosed fee from Time-Life for This Old House Magazine.
Then there are WGBH's ties to the Democratic Party. Alan D. Solomont, former finance chairman for the DNC, is on the WGBH board of directors. He is married to Susan Lewis, who worked at WGBH as director of development. Steven Grossman, former chairman of the DNC, gave $50,000 to WGBH to help produce a documentary featuring an interview with his wife, a political appointee to the National Council on the Arts, an advisory board for the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA, in turn, has funded a series on arts censorship produced by WGBH.
Given all this, it comes as no surprise that despite its nonpartisan posture, WGBH's programming clearly reflects a political agenda. In the 1980s the station established the "Frontline" documentary series. Among its programs were an episode accusing President Reagan of treason, a pro-Palestinian Liberation Organization documentary and an environmentalist miniseries called "Race to Save the Planet." In 1992 a WGBH election-night special culminated in cheering and applause by WGBH staffers in the studio as Bill Clinton went over the top.
Today, public broadcasters have the best of both worlds. When asking for subsidies from Congress, they claim to be interested only in public service. But when Congress asks them to account for their activities, they argue that they are independent, private nonprofit corporations. That fundamental contradiction explains why public broadcasters have been able to do so well--and why the scandal over list swapping isn't going away
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