Lawmakers Protest Installing Prominent Republican as CPB President

Lawmakers have expressed concern to Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson over allegations that he hired Republican lobbyists to review a PBS program without disclosing the hire to the rest of the CPB board. In meetings this week, the CPB Board hopes to elect a new president, reported to be Patricia Harrison, an Assistant Secretary of State and a former Co-Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.
“We find it astonishing that Ms. Harrison, given her former prominence as a partisan political figure, would even be considered as a candidate for a job that demands that the occupant be non-political,” wrote Sens. Byron Dorgan, Hillary Clinton and Frank Lautenberg. They said it would be a “serious mistake” to select Harrison as president of an organization designed to “insulate public broadcasters from government and politics.”