American education secretary slams show with lesbian characters

swiss

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/26/education.secretary.pbs.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles.

The not-yet-aired episode of "Postcards From Buster" shows the title character, an animated bunny named Buster, on a trip to Vermont -- a state known for recognizing same-sex civil unions. The episode features two lesbian couples, although the focus is on farm life and maple sugaring.

A PBS spokesman said late Tuesday that the nonprofit network has decided not to distribute the episode, called "Sugartime!," to its 349 stations. She said the Education Department's objections were not a factor in that decision.

"Ultimately, our decision was based on the fact that we recognize this is a sensitive issue, and we wanted to make sure that parents had an opportunity to introduce this subject to their children in their own time," said Lea Sloan, vice president of media relations at PBS.

However, the Boston public television station that produces the show, WGBH, does plan to make the "Sugartime!" episode available to other stations. WGBH also plans to air the episode on March 23, Sloan said.

PBS gets money for the "Postcards from Buster" series through the federal Ready-To-Learn program, one aimed at helping young children learn through television.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said the "Sugartime!" episode does not fulfill the intent Congress had in mind for programming. By law, she said, any funded shows must give top attention to "research-based educational objectives, content and materials."

"Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode," Spellings wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of PBS.

"Congress' and the Department's purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television."

She asked PBS to consider refunding the money it spent on the episode.
Three requests

With her letter, Spellings has made criticism of the publicly funded program's depiction of the gay lifestyle one of her first acts as secretary. She began on Monday, replacing Rod Paige as President Bush's education chief.

Spellings issued three requests to PBS.

She asked that her department's seal or any statement linking the department to the show be removed. She asked PBS to notify its member stations of the nature of the show so they could review it before airing it. And she asked for the refund "in the interest of avoiding embroiling the Ready-To-Learn program in a controversy that will only hurt" it.

In closing, she warned: "You can be assured that in the future the department will be more clear as to its expectations for any future programming that it funds."

The department has awarded nearly $100 million to PBS through the program over the last five years in a contract that expires in September, said department spokesman Susan Aspey. That money went to the production of "Postcards From Buster" and another animated children's show, and to promotion of those shows in local communities, she said.

The show about Buster also gets funding from other sources.

In the show, Buster carries a digital video camera and explores regions, activities and people of different backgrounds and religions.

On the episode in question, "The fact that there is a family structure that is objectionable to the Department of Education is not at all the focus of the show, nor is it addressed in the show," said Sloan of PBS.

But she also said: "The department's concerns align very closely with PBS' concerns, and for that reason, it was decided that PBS will not be providing the episode." Stations will receive a new episode, she said.

Sigh. If they really want to stop corrupting influences on youth, why not just ban the bible in kids programmes?

damien

Also of note is that the Dept of Education and other Govt Depts in the US have have hired anti-gay columnists and "journalists" to write about pro-family Govt projects.

damien

Here's more:

Bush administration paying independent commentators
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

27 January 2005

The controversy over the Bush administration paying money to supposedly independent commentators reignited yesterday when it was revealed that another syndicated columnist had been paid to promote the president's policies.

Maggie Gallagher, a regular media commentator on so-called family values, admitted she had received an undisclosed payment of $21,000 from the Department of Health and Human Services to promote Mr Bush's $300m initiative to encourage marriage. She received a further $20,000 to write a report about the government initiative for a private organisation.

Writing in 2002, for instance, for the right-wing National Review Online, she said: "The Bush marriage initiative would emphasise the importance of marriage to poor couples and educate teens on the value of delaying child-bearing until marriage. [This could] carry big payoffs down the road for tax-payers and children."

Last year, in appearances on television, in columns and with newspapers she defended Mr Bush's proposal for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Her website currently carries an article which claims evidence from Sweden suggests gay and lesbian married couples are more likely to divorce than heterosexual couples.

Contacted yesterday by The Independent, Ms Gallagher declined to comment, saying she had addressed the issue in a column posted on her website. In that column she wrote: "My first instinct is to say no... I had no special obligation to disclose this information. I'm a marriage expert. I get paid to write, edit, research, and educate on marriage. If a scholar or expert gets paid to do some work for the government, should he or she disclose that if he writes a paper, essay, or op-ed on the same or similar subject? If this is the ethical standard, it is an entirely new standard."

She added: "The real truth is that it never occurred to me. On reflection, I think... I should have disclosed a government contract... I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers."

The news about Ms Gallagher, president of the conservative Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, follows the earlier revelation that right-wing commentator Armstrong Williams was paid $241,000 to promote the government's education policy. Though he apologised, Mr Williams has lost a number of his columns as a result of the controversy.

Questioned about the practice of the White House making undisclosed payments to pundits, Mr Bush yesterday sought to put the blame on Mr Williams, saying he had "made a mistake". He then conceded that the Department of Education had also acted wrongly, adding: "All our Cabinet secretaries must realise that we are not paying commentators to promote our agenda. Our agenda must stand on its own two feet."

Steve Rendall, an analyst with the independent media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), said Mr Bush was trying to place blame on the commentators rather than accepting that it was the White House that paid them to support its policies.

"The real offence here is that readers or radio listeners are being defrauded in a sense lied to," he said. "They believe they are reading the words or hearing the opinion of an independent pundit but they are being propagandised to by a covert government agent."

He added: "Mr Bush says his policies can stand on their own but they apparently can not."

damien

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/27/mcmanus/index_np.html

Another one is caught.