Television: No Deal for Public TV

After years of kicking public television around as intolerably liberal and Eastern-oriented, the Nixon Administration seemed ready to settle its long war with the Public Broadcasting System. If public television would stop trying to be "a fourth network," said Clay Whitehead, 35, the President's chief television adviser, the White House would press for the long-term federal financing that PBS officials felt was needed as insulation from political pressure.

PBS certainly carried out its part of the bargain. In the past 18 months, such liberal commentators as Sander Vanocur, Bill Moyers and Robert McNeil...

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