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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

Scrap PBS subsidies!

Web posted July 20, 1999

Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff

Conservatives (except for members of the John Birch Society) aren't as susceptible to believing in ``vast left-wing conspiracies'' as, say, liberals like first lady Hillary Clinton believe in ``vast right-wing conspiracies.''

But the Right has long had reason to believe that the public broadcasting system's news and documentary programming, with a few ``face-saving'' exceptions, is basically networked with the Democrat Party's far left wing.

Well, all suspicions have been confirmed with The Boston Globe's recent report that Boston's WGBH -- one of PBS' flagship stations that produces the leftist ``Frontline'' documentary -- has been giving the names of thousands of its fund-drive donors to the Democratic National Committee.

When confronted with this clear violation of its own station policy, management admitted its mistake, claimed it was a ``misunderstanding'' and apologized. But it took digging to get the entire truth out.

At first, management lied, saying the donor swap never happened. Later a spokeswoman had to admit the swaps had been ongoing since 1994.

That's more than just a ``misunderstanding.'' It's an ugly, hush-hush policy that puts PBS executives in bed with the political Left -- at taxpayers' expense.

Within the PBS world, notes media critic L. Brent Bozell, this is a major scandal -- certainly serious enough for Congress to continue to sit on PBS' request for $525 million next year, $175 million more than this year's appropriation.

Yet we wonder why Congress just doesn't kill the entire federal subsidy. There's no point to PBS anymore. It's doing nothing useful that can't be done somewhere else, and often already is. ``Sesame Street'' and other popular children's and adult programs would easily be gobbled up by the ever-expanding cable and Internet.

PBS is a ``Great Society'' dinosaur that's kept around by liberal special interests. It's time for it to sink or swim on its own. Bozell puts the whole issue in proper perspective:

``Not only do Republicans surrender their tax dollars to get defamed by liberal WGBH programs, now WGBH takes their tax dollars and helps the Democrats with their direct-mail fund-raising.'' This cries for a full-scale congressional investigation. That's the least that should be done.