Corporation for Public B.S.

I'd been hearing what I thought were rumors about the Republican takeover of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, though until recently I hadn't noticed very much of an ideological shift in PBS's programming, so I hadn't had a real reason to believe the rumors. But a quick google search reveals that it's true: in 2005, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's funding apparatus was basically handed over to the right wing on a silver platter. Eric Alterman's piece in The Nation is really informative on the matter. Yes, Bill Moyers (American Hero) had been fired and then eventually reinstated due to Bush administration pressures, but once this grave wrong had been righted, I thought things were copacetic again. The only channel I get at home with any clarity is PBS, so I end up watching it pretty regularly (just as in Philly the only TV I had was NPR, so I could tell you what was on at almost any hour of the day, even though NPR is basically loathsome too). If you're a regular watcher, you'll probably have noticed the quite odd law-enforcement turn the channel's taken, the FOXnewsification of PBS has been slow but insidious. Two weeks ago, I watched stupefied as Frontline informed me of the dangers that Mexican immigrants pose to national security, an argument whose rhetoric has always struck me as positively hilarious. A deep voiced authoritative sounding narrator states, "Just one illegal alien crossing the border undermines all of our national security efforts, yet more than five hundred aliens a day manage to pass the border patrol." When has a Mexican immigrant ever turned out to be an operative for a terrorist cell? In reality it's more like, "We must keep our borders safe from all these illegal Mexicans who might mow all our lawns and bus our tables!" The tone of this Frontline special was positively alarmist and the last thing I'd expect from a channel like PBS, except it was actually worse than anything you'd hear on an infotainment channel like Fox because PBS documentaries are cloaked in pseudo-factuality and trumped up "accuracy."