by Rob Levine
Wasn’t it just a few years ago that Republicans were trying to crush public broadcasting because of its alleged liberal bias? How far we’ve come since then. Now, conservatives dominate not only commercial broadcasting, but, increasingly, inflict their partisan creed on public broadcasting as well. Anyone who doesn’t believe this should check out Face to Face (F2F), a "public affairs" show telecast Sunday mornings by KTCA and 17 other Public Television stations in Minnesota and North Dakota.

Face to Face purports to shed light on important issues of the day by casting them in a left/right, conservative/liberal paradigm, but features nothing so much as local politicos and super-lawyers engaged in a sort of wonkish cockfight. Many issues do not fit neatly into this model, excluding the possibility of meaningful discussions taking place on subjects that have more than two sides. The producers further aggravate this situation by aping the conventions of commercial public affairs shows, interrupting the flow every five minutes or so, often flashing unattributed, bite-sized, USA-Today style McInfo statistics on the screen.

According to Steve Young, a local Republican activist, the show was created by himself and Roger Conant, another local Republican activist, to present issues from a Libertarian/Republican perspective. In agreeing to broadcast F2F after a short run on KSTP-TV, where it was first broadcast, KTCA forced the producers to add a second, allegedly balancing co-host, but still allowed the Republican producers to select their own "liberal" oppositional co-host. They unsurprisingly picked men who were either disengaged (Tony Bouza) or disinclined to take progressive positions (i.e. multi-millionaire Vance Opperman) equal to the far-out Libertarian positions of the show’s original host, KSTP-AM radio announcer Jason Lewis. As commentators at Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting have said about the dearth of liberal voices on broadcast television, Opperman may not actually be a progressive, but he plays one on TV.

Ironically, these free market extremists have found their largest audience by tapping into the socially subsidized media of Public Television. KTCA does not pay to broadcast Face to Face, nor does it receive any money from its broadcast. The show's production costs are paid by a tax-exempt organization called Excitement Productions, created by Conant, his wife, KTCA’s VP of Minnesota Productions Bill Hanley, and Young. According to an IRS form 990 found at the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, Conant was the lone funder of Face to Face for 1997, "donating" more than $71,000. This means that not only are taxpayers paying for the broadcast of this partisan political programming, but they are also underwriting the actual production of the show through tax write-offs to wealthy individuals, namely Roger Conant. Unfortunately, this isn’t made clear to viewers of F2F. In fact, F2F has always shown two companies as the corporate underwriters, the Lamat Corporation and Source Capital Ltd. Recently Conant revealed that both are in fact defunct companies.

KTCA Programming Director Tom Holter admitted that he was not aware of Face To Face’s funding situation. "It would seem to me odd that a company is being represented on the air that doesn’t exist," said Holter, "I suspect we’ll have some modification on that."  Also, according to IRS rules, charities such as Excitement Productions must prove broad public support in order to keep their tax-exempt status. Pet charities (where there is a single donor) don’t qualify under the IRS’s 501 3 C section; instead, they must file as Private Foundations, and are subject to other taxes.

Another curious aspect of Face to Face is KTCA’s Bill Hanley being a member of the Excitement Productions board of directors. Hanley said he is on the board to provide oversight of the show. But according to Jon Pratt of the Minnesota Council on Non-Profits, such an arrangement is "a highly unusual and usually inappropriate means to provide oversight, that may compromise the autonomy of the organizations. In any event the oversight is obviously not working."

Apart from its funding, Face to Face, with on-air personality and co-host Jason Lewis, is essentially a television show with talk-radio sensibilities. Casual viewers may not know Lewis, the most party-line of KSTP-AM’s All-Republican daytime lineup, as the man who values property rights more than human rights; the man who once, while defending the teaching of creationism in public schools, disparaged evolution as a "theory."

This borrowing of KSTP talent took an absurd turn when co-host Lewis slid into the guest seat during a show on talk radio. The other guest seat was filled by KSTP-AM "talk-radio expert" Barbara Carlson. With two Republicans already in the guest slots, they inexplicably brought in GOP icon Steve Young as guest host.  Even odder, KSTP-TV anchor Randy Meier once appeared as a guest expert for a show on "TV News: Fact Filled or Frivolous?" (both?)   Even KSTP-TV weatherman Dave Dahl, who, in keeping with his corporate masters' point of view has become a vocal skeptic of global warming, has for some reason appeared twice on F2F.

Content-wise, anyone looking for some kind of enlightenment by watching Face to Face will be sorely disappointed. The show usually boils down to a didactic slugfest featuring a stale rehash of Republican and Democratic party dogma. Although there is an occasional progressive or true liberal on Face to Face, a small cadre of state Republicans—including Center of the American Experiment President Mitch Pearlstein, State Republican boss Bill Cooper, F2F creator Steve Young, etc.—take up a disproportionate share of the guest and host slots, giving the show more of a right-wing Wayne’s World vibe.

And even when the show veers to the left, it can’t seem to get it right. Vance Opperman, the nominally liberal co-host, is also the Chairman of Skip Humphrey’s gubernatorial campaign. A recent show discussed concealed weapons law, a hot topic in the current governor’s race. Opperman spoke for Humphrey; Lewis spoke for Norm Coleman. But ironically, Reform candidate Jesse Ventura, without whose inclusion Humphrey has refused to debate Coleman, was not represented.

KTCA’s Holter says that he was not aware of Opperman’s role as Chairman of Humphrey’s campaign. "It seems to me that it would be a conflict of interest," said Holter. "I absolutely will look into this." At the same time, KTCA executives might want to reconsider the airing of a partisan program that receives public funding under questionable circumstances, and in the process, blemishes a local broadcast jewel.