The Sundance Documentary Fund, One World US, Line TV and New California Media are grantees in the Ford Foundation's $50 million public-media initiative, along with pubcasting groups such as PRX, PRI, Public Radio Capital, the minority consortia and ITVS, the foundation disclosed today.

Salon's Eric Boehlert sizes up CPB's push for balance and Ken Tomlinson pens an op-ed for the Washington Times.

Aaron Barnhart of TV Barn outlines why the ruckus over public broadcasting is overblown.

The Ford Foundation is spending $50 million over five years on public media grants, including $10M to PBS and $7.5M to NPR, the New York Times reported. The PBS grant will back new programming ideas and help start the PBS Foundation. It was not clear whether the $50M sum includes $2 million to ITVS for international viewpoints, $1.8M given this year to Link TV, $1M to American University's Center for Social Media, $600,000 to Consumers Union for media policy work or $300,000 to Prometheus Radio Project for work in grassroots radio. The foundation spent millions to start public TV stations and develop national programming for them in the 1950s and 1960s.