Louise Slaughter: “Mr. Tomlinson ought to go. Mr. Tomlinson had people do some polls. What they found on these polls is 80 percent of…”

“Mr. Tomlinson ought to go. Mr. Tomlinson had people do some polls. What they found on these polls is 80 percent of Americans say PBS is fair and balanced; 90 percent said they had high-quality programming, more than any channel, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) has pointed out. But Mr. Tomlinson did not reveal those results to anybody. He kept it all to himself. You bet there is bias at CPB. It is embodied in this chairman, who must cease and desist his politicization of the agency, which is why I urge you to vote for this amendment. How the House can best aid public broadcasting would be to vote this amendment and for the President of CPB to submit his resignation. Yesterday, this body voted by a substantial margin to restore funding for public broadcasting. We did so after an unprecedented outpouring of public sentiment. Over 1 million people signed petitions within one week's time--proving Americans demand their public broadcasting continue. But we did so mainly because it was the right thing to do. For almost 40 years, only one television channel among the 500 operating today has consistently been regarded by the public as the gold standard of broadcasting. Chairman Tomlinson discovered that for himself when he hired the right-leaning Tarrance group to investigate claims of bias.…”