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Brokaw returns tonight with ‘The Long War’
Typical of Tom Brokaw — aka “Duncan the Wonder Horse” — his retirement from anchoring “NBC Nightly News” has not resulted in one long fishing trip. That’s not how this energetic newsman works.
Brokaw, 65, stepped down in December, took a few months off and then began working on a 10-year contract with NBC that will have him reporting four documentaries a year.
The first one, “The Long War,” airs tonight on “Dateline NBC” (at 7 p.m. on KXAN Channel 36). The hour-long examination of the state of the war on terrorism is a sober look at something Americans seem to be weary of thinking about.
We haven’t won this battle, which began four years ago with the attacks of 9-11, and the threat of another attack still exists. The war on terrorism, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are ongoing.
And yet Americans seem to have turned their attention to more personal problems, such as health insurance, Social Security and financial solvency. Brokaw believes, and rightfully so, that we need to be reminded of what is arguably the biggest story — and biggest national commitment — of our day.
For “The Long War,” Brokaw went to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, France and, of course, Washington, D.C. There are interviews with CIA chief Porter Goss, Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Saud al-Faisal, and other top government officials.
In spite of the load of info and interviews crammed into the hour, “The Long War” is not the least bit tedious or boring. It’s depressing but important and compelling.
Brokaw’s next project, tentatively scheduled for July 6, is about Watergate informant “Deep Throat” (Mark Felt), the third hour will be about American evangelicals; and the fourth will be about a group of National Guardsmen from upstate New York adjusting to life after Iraq.
Federal funding: The wind beneath Big Bird’s wings
Big Bird will not have his gigantic yellow wings clipped after all.
Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives restored $100 million that had been proposed as a cut for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee recently had slashed $100 million from $400 million in previously enacted CPB support.
CPB is a private entity created to funnel public money from Congress to public TV and radio. But Republican partisans, who have criticized PBS for an alleged liberal bias, have sought to deny funds and add conservative programming.
Thursday’s 284 to 140 vote was a triumph for PBS, whose bipartisan supporters rallied behind such widely praised programs as “Sesame Street,” “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and “Nova.”
CPB chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, a staunch Republican, has been carping about PBS’s liberalism for years, and the criticism heated to the boiling point in a crusade against Bill Moyers. The House vote may have been a rejection of Tomlinson’s budget cut, but Tomlinson did succeed in naming Patricia Harrison, a former Republican Party co-chair, as CPB’s new president.
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