Michael,
...And these SOBs are subsidized with OUR
tax money...!
--------------------------------
THE BOSTON GLOBE
globe.com
PBS chief resigns; list-swapping linked to Democratic Party
By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff, 09/10/99
WASHINGTON - The controversy over the direct-mail fund-raising
practices of public broadcasting stations was thrust back into the
spotlight yesterday, as the president of the Public Broadcasting Service
resigned and an inspector general's report concluded that stations had
officially shared donor lists almost entirely with Democrats.
When the practice of list-swapping was disclosed earlier this year, many
station officials claimed the effort was bipartisan, with lists being shared with
both political parties to find new donors.
And in fact, some stations did share their donors' names with groups that
sounded like Republican organizations, according to an investigation by the
inspector general of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But the
investigator found that the vast majority of those groups were not connected
to the Republican Party, and that it now appears the Democratic Party was
mostly involved.
The report was released as the president of the Public Broadcasting Service,
Ervin S. Duggan, resigned after five years in the post. Although PBS officials
said the move was unrelated to the list-swapping scandal, at least one House
Republican accused the organization of trying to use Duggan as a scapegoat.
Ken Johnson, a spokesman for Representative W.J. 'Billy' Tauzin, the
Louisiana Republican who is chairman of the House committee that oversees
funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said, 'The inference is
that he is being forced to walk the plank for the donor list scandal.'
Johnson also said, 'If they're going to force someone to walk the plank, they
should start with station management at WGBH,' the Boston public
television station at the center of the controversy.
But Tom Epstein, a spokesman for PBS, said there was 'absolutely no
connection' between the timing of Duggan's announcement and the release
of the report. Epstein said the 31-page report does not even mention PBS,
but focuses instead on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the umbrella
organization that receives congressional funding and issues grants to public
television and radio stations.
Duggan, who plans to leave his post Oct. 31, did not mention the
fund-raising controversy, but said: 'A strategy to create greater financial
security and enduring value for PBS and its member stations is now in place.
I have relished serving as a public champion of PBS's unique mission of
education, culture, and citizenship.'
WGBH's president, Henry Becton, said yesterday that he welcomed the
inspector general's findings.
'His review underscores that there were only two incidents of WGBH
sharing a portion of our donors' names with a political organization. It was
not an ongoing activity,' Becton said. 'These two incidents violated our own
policy against such releases, and I accept responsibility, along with the senior
managers who oversee this aspect of our operation, for these errors.
Effective immediately we are putting in place a revised donor mailing list
policy and establishing new approval and compliance systems to strengthen
oversight of all list-related activity.'
The list-swapping dispute began in May, when a contributor to WGBH
received a solicitation from the Democratic Party. Immediately realizing her
young son's name had been passed from the station to the political
organization, the donor contacted the Globe, which published an article
about the incident.
In July, however, just as the House telecommunications subcommittee was
about to begin debate over funding for public broadcasting, two disclosures
emerged: that WGBH had swapped its lists with the Democratic Party more
often that it initially admitted and that the list-swapping practice was going on
at public television stations across the country.
Republicans on the House panel immediately stopped the funding debate
and held a hearing about the mailing practices, repeating their longtime
charge that public broadcasting is influenced by liberal Democrats.
Yesterday, with the release of the report, the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting appeared open to that accusation once again. Kenneth A.
Konz, the inspector general who assessed the involvement of the nation's
183 public TV stations and 408 radio stations, found that 53 of the stations -
or 9 percent of the total - made their donor lists available to political
organizations.
'Virtually all of the exchange or rental transactions of station
membership/donor names were to apparently Democratic organizations,'
Konz wrote.
He did not identify any Republican organizations, but did mention 'Dole
Donors,' a list of contributors to the 1996 Dole campaign owned by Bob
Dole Enterprises Inc.
Konz said some groups involved in the list-swapping appeared to be
connected to the Republican Party, such as the 'Country Club Republicans'
or one called 'Pataki,' the name of the governor of New York. But neither
of those lists was connected to the Republican Party, Konz found. They
were lists of donors compiled by so-called list brokers, based on information
from public campaign fund-raising records.
'While many of the names acquired by the public broadcasters came from
lists which had political-sounding names, they were not in fact owned or
compiled by political organizations,' the report said.
In addition to WGBH-TV, other New England stations that participated in
the practice included Connecticut Network Television; New Hampshire
Public Television; WKPT-FM Radio in Meriden, Conn.; WMEH-FM
Radio in Bangor; WMEA-FM Radio in Portland, Maine; and WGBH-FM
Radio in Boston.
Other stations, including radio stations WBUR-FM and WUMB in Boston,
did not make their donor lists available to political groups.
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 09/10/99.
¸ Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
globe.com
---------------------------------------- |
