CPB's Traitor Baiter

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is now headed by Republican fundraisers Cheryl Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines. CPB vice chair Gaines was a charter member of GOPAC, a group most notably associated with Newt Gingrich's 1994 House takeover. The Nation's David Corn recently reviewed a 1990 GOPAC memo titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" that lists words to use to talk up GOP vision - ''caring," "freedom" and "prosperity" - and to trash Democrats - "corrupt," "intolerant" and "traitors." "This is to say that Gay Hart Gaines ... was a leading official of an outfit that advised Republican candidates to brand Democrats 'traitors,'" Corn writes. "Of course, advocates and party funders have the right to be as partisan (and rhetorically extreme) as they wish. But the CPB is an entity that is supposed to oversee journalistic endeavors. Should a supporter of party propagandists be in charge of overseeing the journalism of PBS and NPR?"