It looks like the liberal broadcasting icon Bill Moyers is joining the call for nationwide public hearings on the future of public broadcasting in America. The call results from the panic that has resulted from the efforts of the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, to advance the idea that public broadcasting in America needs to be more balanced. Critics of the way public broadcasting has been conducted in an era of liberal hegemony must be shaking their heads in amazement and saying, “Go ahead, make our day.”

Mr. Moyers and his friends on the left haven’t quite seen the folly of government funding for broadcast media. But they claim to have uncovered a plot to transform it into a propaganda arm of the Bush administration. At least, that’s the conclusion they draw from the fact that since he came to CPB, Mr. Tomlinson has been attempting to introduce some balance to the public affairs lineup on PBS. A particularly troubling sign of the new regime, critics say, is “The Journal Editorial Report,” a show that features editorialists from the Wall Street Journal discussing current events for half an hour every week.

At the National Conference for Media Freedom yesterday, Mr. Moyers inveighed against Mr. Tomlinson: “I simply never imagined that any CPB chairman, Democrat or Republican, would cross the line from resisting White House pressure to carrying it out for the White House. And that’s what Kenneth Tomlinson has been doing.” That’s certainly one view. But a spokesman for the CPB recently told us that Mr. Tomlinson is simply taking seriously a legal requirement to be objective and balanced that has governed CPB since 1992.

If some public affairs shows are going to express a particular viewpoint, the law seems to be that people on the other side of the political spectrum should be allowed to air their views, too. Mr. Tomlinson is also adamant that the CPB is not trying to take liberal shows off the air. It is merely attempting to add conservative voices to the mix. Even then, public affairs programming makes up but a small portion of public broadcasting’s overall schedule, especially when compared to the private 24-hour cable channels the market has provided without any government subsidies.

Mr. Moyers has his own dog in this fight. Until he retired within the past year, he had his own current affairs program on PBS, “NOW with Bill Moyers.” The series is still rattling away from a leftist perspective, imbued with his spirit but without his name in the title. Despite his claims to be an objective journalist, Mr. Moyers has long since earned a reputation for being far from detached broadcaster. And as it happens, “NOW with Bill Moyers” generated most of the complaints of liberal bias at PBS that have spurred Mr. Tomlinson to try to introduce some balance.

Mr. Tomlinson may well be guilty of being a conservative, but he has played at Reader’s Digest and other important journalistic posts a leading role in the journalism of our day. He knows his craft. The acting president of CPB, W. Kenneth Ferree, also comes in for scorn from liberals. But they could be the Paul Bunyan of broadcasting, and they would have their work cut out for them if the idea is that they are going to somehow clear out the left-of-center fare that fills the public airwaves. So if Mr. Moyers wants to have hearings, it sounds like a good idea to us. Let’s hold them in Congress. It would be a good opportunity to reconsider whether, in an age when no less than six 24-hour news and public affairs channels are routinely included in basic cable packages that offer 50 other entertainment channels, the government even needs to fund public broadcasting anymore.