Pushing PBS to the right
May 10, 2005 | In the early 1970s a civil war erupted inside the fledgling world of public television. Upset with what they saw as its liberal news and public affairs programming, and particularly its tough coverage of the Vietnam War and the Watergate hearings, Nixon administration officials moved to rein in public television by stacking the board at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which acts as a governing body for the hundreds of local stations nationwide. The board then sought to control national programming decisions and curtail news programming.