BIG BIRD FLIES RIGHT.(seeking funding for public television, Public Broadcasting System president Pat Mitchell reaches out to conservatives)

A year and a half ago, Pat Mitchell, the president of the Public Broadcasting System, was invited to tea at Vice-President Cheney's house. The federal government is PBS's biggest patron, and Mitchell was happy to accept. There to greet her, on December 11, 2002, was Lynne Cheney, the Vice-President's wife, and Michael Pack, a producer. Cheney has written a number of children's books, and Mitchell especially liked "A Is for Abigail"--Abigail Adams--which was subtitled "An Almanac of Amazing American Women." She knew that Pack, who had made documentaries for PBS, had ties to the Bush Administration; he had recently been nominated by George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate to serve on the National Council on the Humanities.

After some pleasantries, Pack proposed a series of hour-long television programs aimed at middle-school children. Pack later explained, "We brought Pat Mitchell there to see if it was acceptable to have the Vice-President's wife be on a show on public television." Pack said that the plan was to look "for private funding, not government funding," and he didn't know if Mrs. Cheney would be paid; no one asked whether PBS would help fund the series. Mitchell, Pack added, was "enthusiastic about the project and did not feel it was a problem."

A follow-up meeting was subsequently arranged between Pack and PBS's programming co-chief John Wilson, on January 27, 2003, at PBS's offices, in Alexandria, Virginia. "We were trying to be sensitive to the fact that Lynne Cheney was associated with this," Wilson said. Wilson remembers the proposed title as "Lynne Cheney's History Book." Wilson's deputy, Alyce Myatt, who has since left PBS, had a blunter reaction: "I said it was inappropriate for the second-highest-ranking public official to be requesting time on public television." Wilson confirmed this misgiving, adding, "That was one of the questions hanging over the table--the appropriateness of a government official or spouse" appearing on public television.

Mitchell recently told me that she was never enthusiastic about the program. "I was enthusiastic about Mrs. Cheney's books, which I give to children," she said. And in the end, Mitchell said, her staff agreed that "it would be a problem having Mrs. Cheney as host." In any event, just weeks after the meeting with Wilson and Myatt, Pack was appointed senior vice-president for television programming for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which dispenses federal funding to PBS and local stations, and he recused himself from the project. His wife, Gina Pack, who now runs his company, said of the Cheney proposal, "I haven't done too much on it for a while."

In a way, these conversations were in the spirit of American public broadcasting, which was developed in the nineteen-sixties. Part of its mission has been to bring different points of view to television, and there has never been a series hosted by the wife of a Vice-President--or by any senior government official. The project also might have pleased American conservatives, who suspect public broadcasting--PBS and National Public Radio--of having a left-leaning agenda.

This is no trivial concern. Congress contributes some fifteen per cent of the annual budget--two billion dollars--of PBS and its three hundred and forty-nine member stations. In the Bush era, with Republicans in control of Congress, an organization like PBS, which is perceived as liberal, seems particularly vulnerable. In February, Common Cause warned that conservatives in Congress were planning to slash federal funding for public broadcasting. One target was the weekly PBS program "Now with Bill Moyers," which, since its launch, in January, 2002, has aired more than three dozen stories and interviews exploring how conservative policies have endangered the environment.

During the Reagan era, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting came under particular scrutiny. Richard Brookhiser, then a C.P.B. board member and a senior editor at National Review, urged a "content analysis" of PBS programming, in order to study the purported left-wing bias of public television. When Newt Gingrich was designated the Speaker of the House, in 1995, he denounced public broadcasting as "this little sandbox for the rich," while proposing to "zero-out" its federal subsidies. "The only group lobbying" for public broadcasting, Gingrich said, is "a small group of elitists who want to tax all the American people so they get to spend the money." Some elected officials talked about selling part of the public broadcasting system to investors; Senator Larry Pressler, of South Dakota, wanted to enact legislation to ...