"Getting it right, not right-wing": "Objectivity is not satisfied by two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to split the difference," said longtime journalist Bill Moyers at this weekend's National Conference on Media Reform. "I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies as well as the Big Lie of the people in power. In no way does this permit journalists to make accusations and allegations. It means, instead, making sure that your reporting and your conclusions can be nailed to the post with confirming evidence."

But while Moyers' PBS show NOW brought in a cacophony of voices from the left and right—Sister Joan Chittister, Grover Norquist, Rep. Ron Paul, Kristina van den Heuvel of The Nation and conservative commentator Cal Thomas—it's been heaped with scorn by rightwingers who accuse it of leftwing bias. These charges are led by Kenneth Tomlinson, the conservative Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Tomlinson commissioned a $10,000 study—paid for with tax dollars—on the alleged biases of NOW, but won't release the findings, while at the same time, he reportedly committed around five million dollars to get a Wall Street Journal show on PBS every week. A $5 million subsidy to put members of the editorial board of a Dow Jones company (that had first-quarter earnings of $400 million) on PBS? "I thought public television was supposed to be an alternative to commercial media, not a funder of it," says Moyers.

But here's CPB's problem with Moyers' show:

Ideologues don't want you to go beyond the typical labels of left and right. They embrace a world view that can't be proven wrong because they will admit no evidence to the contrary. They want your reporting to validate their belief system and when it doesn't, God forbid. Never mind that their own stars were getting a fair shake on NOW: Gigot, Viguerie, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Stephen Moore, then with the Club for Growth, and others. No, our reporting was giving the radical right fits because it wasn't the party line. It wasn't that we were getting it wrong. Only three times in three years did we err factually, and in each case we corrected those errors as soon as we confirmed their inaccuracy.

The problem was that we were telling stories that partisans in power didn't want told: we were getting it right, not right-wing.

Read Moyers' entire speech here. And click here to "tell Congress, the CPB and PBS station managers remove Tomlinson and support town meetings in your community on the future of PBS."