BY ELAINE MAGLIARO

On February 12th, David Sirota broke an exclusive story on PandoDaily titled The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division. Sirota reported that PBS’s flagship station WNET had issued a press release announcing the launch of a new two-year news series entitled The Pension Peril last December. According to Sirota, the series, which promotes cuts to public employee pensions, “is airing on hundreds of PBS outlets all over the nation.” He said the series was being presented “as objective news on major PBS programs including the PBS News Hour.” He added, however, that both the WNET press release and the broadcasted segments neglected to “explicitly” disclose who was financing the series. Pando found out who was actually funding “The Pension Peril” series—John Arnold, a billionaire political power-broker and former Enron trader.

Sirota reported how Arnold had—in recent years—been using huge contributions “to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits.” According to Sirota, the Arnold foundation “employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX) to help with his “pension” campaign. According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushing lawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.”

Writing for Salon last week, Sirota said the following:

… However, at the same time the billionaire Arnold is funding PBS’s pension-related coverage, he is also sponsoring the nationwide legislative push to slash public employee pension benefits. Indeed, with his massive contributions to super PACs, think tanks and local front groups, Arnold is financing a national movement to convince legislators to, in the words of his foundation, “stop promising a [retirement] benefit” to public workers.
This is likely why the Arnold-backed PBS pension series has loyally echoed the billionaire’s anti-pension themes. Knowing its benefactor’s message, PBS has echoed the Arnold foundation by promoting cuts to public workers’ retirement benefits as the primary solution to state budget problems. PBS has done this in its “Pension Peril” segments without mentioning that pension fund shortfalls are dwarfed by the amount state and local governments are spending on taxpayer-funded corporate subsidies. PBS has also done it without explicitly disclosing its connection to Arnold.

For example, as our PandoDaily report documented, WNET did not mention Arnold in its press release announcing the PBS series. Likewise, while PBS did mention the Arnold Foundation in a long list of funders at the beginning of its news programs, it did not tell viewers that the foundation was specifically funding the pension series, much less that Arnold is concurrently leading a legislative push for retirement benefit cuts. Even in the series’ report promoting a pension-cutting ballot initiative in California, PBS did not mention that the series’ own benefactor, Arnold, is a major financial backer of the measure.

Last year, Sirota wrote a report titled The Plot Against Pensions for the Institute for America’s Future. One of the report’s key findings was that the Laura and John Arnold Foundation was working with the Pew Charitable Trust “in states across the country to focus the debate over pensions primarily on slashing retiree benefits rather than on raising public revenues.” Sirota reported that the two organizations were “working in tandem on public pension policy to manufacture the perception of crisis and press for cuts to guaranteed retirement income.” subsidies.”

One would hope that having knowledge of Arnold’s campaign against public employee pensions and its ties to partisan politics might have given PBS pause for thought before taking money from the billionaire’s foundation to fund The Pension Peril series. Despite this, though, a spokesperson for the Laura and John Arnold foundation said that PBS executives had actually approached John Arnold “with the proposal for the series, having become aware of LJAF’s interest” in shaping public pension policy, and moving that policy toward cutting retirement benefits for public workers. The foundation responded to the funding request with a $3.5 million donation—which was “earmarked for “educat(ing) the public about public employees’ retirement benefits…”

Kellie Spencer, spokesperson for WNET, confirmed to Pando that LJAF’s huge contribution made it the “anchor/lead funder of the initiative.” Sirota said that a “single note buried on PBS’s website – but not repeated in such explicit terms on PBS airwaves – confirms that the money is directly financing the ‘Pension Peril’ series.”

Sirota (PandoDaily):

The news of PBS actively soliciting financing from billionaire political activists – and custom tailoring original program proposals for those financiers – follows a wave of damning revelations about the influence of super-wealthy political interests over public broadcasting. Thanks to collusion with PBS executives, those monied interests are increasingly permitted to launder their ideological and self-serving messages through the seeming objectivity of public television.

The stealth Arnold-PBS connection, however, represents a major escalation in the larger trend. In this particular case, PBS seems to be defying its own rules and regulations about conflicts of interest. At the same time, the fact that PBS is obscuring the financial arrangement suggests the network may be deliberately attempting to hide those conflicts from its own viewers.

NOTE: Following PandoDaily’s exclusive report The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division, PBS officials announced that they would be returning the $3.5 million dollars that it had received from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

SOURCES
The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division (PandoDaily)

BREAKING: PBS to return John Arnold’s $3.5 million, following Pando exposé (PandoDaily)

In new letter, PBS promises to continue taking anti-pension billionaire’s money and echoing his message (PandoDaily)

When did PBS become the Plutocratic Broadcasting Service?
Proof our public media is doomed: Former Enron trader John Arnold is using the network to wage his war on pensions (Salon)

Public Television Multi-Platform Initiative Examines Public Pensions in America’s Cities and States (WNET)

Former Enron Trader Funding PBS Series On Pensions (Firedoglake)

Looking at the Causes of the Public Pension Problem in America (Flowers for Socrates)

The Plot Against Pensions (Institute for America’s Future)

OPB Statement on “Pension Peril”

WNET Statement Regarding Pension Initiative (WNET)

WNET to Return $3.5 Million Grant for Pension Series (New York Times)