Mr. Bundy, you asked for evidnece of public broadcasting bias and it was supplied to you. Are you willing now to concede the point?

Bias is a relative term. You supplied "evidence" that Bill Moyers threw softball questions at one guest. Could one not appropriately draw the conclusion that Bill Moyers is a softball interviewer based on the "evidence" you supplied?

I provided the most recent example as it was freshest in the mind and the easiest to find, but were I to undertake a more thorough search of transcripts of the same interviewer, more would be found.

For instance, in this 2005 speach Moyers made arguements that it was necessary for "reporters" to essentially insert their point of view into covering news. Here's an excerpt:

Now, in the matter of the interview with Reverend Wright, even the PBS ombudsman agrees that Moyers is doing exactly what he seems to decry -- failing to challange. Instead of speaking truth to power, he rolled over. Why? Would he be so deferential if he was interviewing, say, John Hagee?

But the issue at hand in this discussion is whether taxpayer money should go to fund public television. It's not about Bill Moyers (or Big Bird for that matter).

Did, I read the results wrong, or did the poll just swing wildly towards the affirmative?

The media outlets owned by conservatives aren't running Hagee's sermons every half hour. They've yet to turn him into a household name and use him against McCain. It's the desired effect to use the tape of the angry black preacher to get whites up in arms. Having seen the interview, I was glad to see Wright's comments placed in context and that Moyers wanted to go beyond Willie Horton scare tactics.

So that's why public broadcasting should be funded by taxpayer money?

I was responding to your comments about the Moyers interview and the remarks from the ombudsmen that you pasted. It's difficult to take any bias accusation seriously when the accusation is biased and subjective. A more important question to me is: why have the big media outlets and PBS remained virtually mute on Hagee's sermons?

Do I think that two cents per person [last figures I saw] is too much to support PBS? No. I'm sure most intelligent, thoughtful people are able to listen to other opinions without collapsing into hysterics, and if they can't, there are other programming options on PBS to pay for their two cents.

This is a classic example of begging the question and assuming the answer. You don't really know how "deferential" he'd be when interviewing John Hagee.

Furthermore, only in today's America could Wright's positions be viewed as left wing. He spouts traditionally right wing government conspiracy theories, but is considered left wing by you simply because he is black.

All things considered, you still haven't even remotely proved that PBS is biased. Please provide an example of Bill Moyers giving a hard time to an interview subject.

Not true.

The US population per the last census was about 281 million, and the current population is estimated at 304 million (304 million people x $0.02 per person = $6.08 million). The 2007 congressional appropriation for CPB was $400 million ($400 million / 304 million people = $1.32 per person).

Your are correct that I don't "know" how Moyers would approach someone like a John Hagee, but I can certainly draw an informed conclusion by comparing the tone of his Wright interview to the tone of this report from his show last year.

That report was incredibly even-handed. It appears you are looking for things that simply are not there.

You watched it? (Forgive my suspicious nature, but it is a 19 minute piece and only 8 minutes elapsed between my post and yours. Perhaps you had already seen it.)

Advertising ruins television channels. If PBS wasn't government funded, then more ad space would have to be sold, and that would be the end of PBS. It would just turn to garbage. I like that PBS doesn't censor content in watershed time unlike all the other network channels.

I'd be grouchy without my occasional Frontline fix.

PBS unlike commercial television does not exist soley to show you commercials.

Also I'd much rather have congress fund PBS than bad businessmen who make terrible cars.

If a bad businessman makes a bad TV network, people dont watch it and they go out of business (unless the company is, "too big to fail"

If a bad government makes a bad TV network, people dont watch it so they throw more tax dollars at it so people continue to not watch it.

This assumes that PBS is a "bad TV network" that people don't want to watch.

Ratings are not generally important to PBS because it is not a commercial entity and does not sell ad time.