"It's not censorship if we do it ourselves!" says PBS Prez

Via TPM, here's a Globe article on the Spellings-Lesbian-PBS thing. :

Last week, PBS agreed with WGBH that it was appropriate to air. On Friday, a PBS spokeswoman said that the PBS president, Pat Mitchell, had viewed the episode and was satisfied with its contents, especially in light of the fact that WGBH pushed back the air date of the episode from Feb. 2 to March 23 to allow member stations time to review the contents.

Over the weekend, Mitchell had second thoughts, said Wayne Godwin, chief operating officer of PBS. Her concern, he said, was that ''the debate surrounding this might cause parents to be concerned about PBS as a safe harbor. There is a concern that this particular material at this age group might not be appropriate.'

Godwin said that Mitchell reached her decision before she received a letter from Spellings. Godwin said he does not agree with those who say the government is censoring public television. ''There's always a tendency to dash to that conclusion,' he said.

In fact, Godwin said, PBS needs to evaluate itself to determine how such an episode reached an ''advanced stage of acceptance without us having more thoughtful involvement.'

One result of this incident may be the creation of a panel that would evaluate whether children's programming is suitable for broadcast, he said.

So we are actually expected to believe that the president of PBS changed her mind her ownself over the weekend, before she got the letter from Spellings. But in any case, PBS will set up a special panel right now to ensure that nothing that might get them in trouble with Spellings will ever show up on the network again.