Who’s Minding The PBS Store?

by digby

There must be something in the air. First, Matthews feels the need to give Ann Coulter a full hour to spew genocidal vomit and now I find that PBS has hired the notorious fraud Frank Luntz to analyze “public feedback” on the Democratic debate. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. He is one of the architects of the Republican Revolution and along with Newt Gingrich is the man most responsible for the distorted, propagandistic political discourse we spend our lives on the blogs trying to unravel. He has no business “interpreting” Democratic voters’ reaction to Democratic candidates based upon his political affiliation alone. But the fact that he has been completely discredited as a pollster and analyst by his own profession should make him radioactive for any respectable news organization. I can’t imagine what is wrong with PBS that they don’t know about this man.

He is obviously rooting for his former client Giuliani, although he says he isn’t advising him — and perhaps he’s not. He just goes all over television telling anyone who will listen that Giuliani is the only candidate who “says what he means and means what he says” and that just happens to be the quality everybody most wants in a candidate. (The Democrats, sadly, just don’t have anyone who does that.)

Something odd is going on at PBS lately. They also invited that Coulter wannabe Melanie Morgan on Lehrer recently, apparently under the misapprehension that she was a sane spokeswoman of the right, and she proved to be a complete disaster. Now they have hired straight up right wing political operative Luntz to “interpret” the impressions of Democratic voters. Are they getting their bookers from the Heritage Foundation web site too?

This isn’t difficult. There are plenty of pollsters and social scientists who aren’t dishonest and aren’t partisan hacks. Some of them are even Republicans. This guy isn’t one of them. He’s been a very important cog in the machinery of the right wing noise machine for years, manipulating the political language of our country to favor the Republican party and he’s very, very good at it. He’s the last person anyone should hire to “analyze” Democrats fairly. They might as well have hired Karl Rove.

Media Matters has put out an action alert if you care to send a little note to PBS and ask them not to hire Republican operatives so they can sandbag the Democratic presidential candidates on their airwaves.

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