According to the New York Times, the Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives at PBS consider liberal bias. Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, said Republican, is mistakenly confusing a liberal bias with conservative malfeasance.

Without the knowledge of his board, chairman Tomlinson contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests’ political leanings on one program, “Now With Bill Moyers.” The exact tracking criteria was not released, but they did investigate the bias of the bumperstickers and t-shirts owned by each guest.

Mr. Tomlinson fired PBS president and CEO, Cathleen Cox, in order to replace her with Patrician Harrison. Although there is a national search firm looking into her replacement, Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state.

Tomlinson has repeatedly criticized public television programs as too liberal overall, and said in a NYTimes interview, “I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is a tone deafness to issues of tone and balance.” Perhaps it is all the gunfire over in Iraq that has deadened his ear drums.