A commentary (registration required) on The Washington Times' “Insider Politics” weblog by chief political correspondent Donald Lambro featured numerous falsehoods relating to the current debate over public broadcasting. Lambro inaccurately asserted that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) grants $400 million in annual funding to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR); that the directors of both organizations are White House appointees; that CPB ombudsman Ken Bode is a “liberal”; and that the PBS program Washington Week features only “liberal journalists.”

In a May 20 post titled “Holding PBS Accountable,” Lambro stated that PBS and NPR “receive nearly $400 million a year in taxpayer support.” Lambro apparently arrived at this figure by conflating CPB's entire annual appropriation from the federal government with the funding that CPB grants to these two specific content providers. In fact, CPB provided less than $90 million in direct funding to PBS and NPR in 2004. CPB funding represented 24 percent, or approximately $80 million, of PBS' $333 million 2004 budget. NPR reported that between 1 percent and 2 percent of its 2004 budget of $369 million came from CPB. The rest of CPB's budget goes to grants to local public TV and radio stations; and grants to individual programs produced or distributed by Public Radio International, American Public Television, five minority programming consortia, and numerous small, independent TV and radio producers. While local TV and radio stations may use a portion of the money they receive from CPB to purchase programming from PBS and NPR, CPB grants provide only a fraction of the budget for these local stations. The stations also use CPB funds, along with the rest of their budgets, to produce original programming and to purchase programming from other producers, including those listed above.

Contrary to Lambro's claim that PBS and NPR's “board of directors and other top executives are appointed by the White House,” both the PBS and NPR boards of directors, each of which includes the organizations' presidents, are elected by their respective member stations nationwide.

Lambro also echoed recent allegations by CPB chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson of liberal bias at PBS and pointed to the program Washington Week as an “offender.” He described it as “a talk show that brings together a bunch of liberal journalists to examine the news.” But he offered no evidence for this claim, and a review of the current roster of regular Washington Week panelists shows that most are simply news reporters or editors.

Additionally, Lambro furthered the baseless claim that CPB ombudsman Ken Bode is a “liberal,” ignoring his endorsement of Indiana Republican gubernatorial candidate Mitch Daniels in 2004 and his position as an adjunct fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi and Roll Call Washington executive editor Morton M. Kondracke have made identical, unsupported claims.