• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 6, 2005

In typical governmental, hyperbolic fashion, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), which acts as an ombudsman of sort for public broadcasting, has hired - who else - two ombudsmen.

Former NBC newsman Ken Bode and former Reader's Digest editor William Schulz are coming on board to promote balance and accountability, according to CPB executives.

Okay, but who is going to watch Bode and Schulz? How many layers of bureaucracy do we need - ironically -- from a Republican administration always looking to trim the governmental fat?

The Bush Administration wants to make sure public programming is fair and balanced - but this isn't how the creative process works exactly. Maybe there's an argument for news programming. Fictional programming needs to have a point of view.

For-profit broadcast networks have standard and practices executives - to make sure programming is up to snuff. Perhaps the headhunters at the CPB didn't read the memo correctly. The CPB, itself, is supposed to act as a buffer between politics and public broadcasting.

Massaging programs for the perfect blend of equal points of view will only mean a blend of bland shows - something PBS-style programming has seen enough of in its history.

Now, it seems, the Bush Administration wants to water down whatever zip PBS programming had in the first place. Why? It's no secret it wants out of the broadcasting business - and one of those efforts is to increasingly pull back all governmental funding from public broadcasting shows, especially funding coming from CPB.

Many daily newspapers and other media outlets have ombudsmen, but those professionals use their columns to show the rights and wrongs of specific stories, postmortem. CPB wants to do this beforehand.

Did someone say the word censorship? CPB says not. But it could do just the opposite. Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy said that the office of ombudsman "is just another way of ratcheting up political pressure on public broadcasting by conservatives."

Now, try to produce a news show, say, for the series "Frontline," with some bite or new angle on the Iraq war. Good luck.