WASHINGTON — The ranking Democrats on two House committees with control over public broadcasting want recent activities of Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson investigated to see whether he violated the 1967 law that established the private, nonprofit organization.

"Recent news reports suggesting that the CPB increasingly is making personnel and funding decisions on the basis of political ideology are extremely troubling," Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., and Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., wrote in a letter earlier this month to the corporation's Inspector General Kenneth Konz.

The ranking members on the Energy and Commerce and Appropriations committees, respectively, asked Konz to investigate several recent corporation activities and to turn over all relevant documents to them.

Specifically, they called for an investigation of a report that, without the knowledge of his board, Tomlinson contracted an outside consultant last year to monitor the "political content" of Bill Moyers' "Now" for "anti-Bush," "anti-business" and "anti-Tom DeLay" "biases." (Moyers left the show in December, but it is on the air with a new host.)

Dingell and Obey also want Konz to look into a report that Tomlinson told members of the Association of Public Television Stations meeting in Baltimore with CPB and PBS officials last November that they should make sure their programming better reflects the Republican mandate.

The congressmen also cited reports that Tomlinson was involved in securing $5 million in corporate funding for "The Journal Editorial Report," headlined by the editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, and pressed PBS into distributing it.

They want investigated whether Tomlinson played a personal role in the funding and approval of a show for PBS hosted by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, and whether any attempt was made to review the "objectivity and balance" of those two shows in the same way "Now" was scrutinized.

The congressmen noted that "Congress intended that the CPB serve as a shield rather than a source of political interference into public broadcasting."

The Public Broadcasting Act forbids the corporation to produce, schedule or distribute programs and requires any assistance to the production and acquisition of programs to be "evaluated on the basis of comparative merit by panels of outside experts, representing diverse interests and perspectives, appointed by the Corporation."

Much of the information cited by the pair came from an article in The New York Times; other information came from articles on Salon.com and in The New Yorker. The two men also mentioned a commentary by Tomlinson in The Washington Times in which he "cited 'the left-wing bias' of 'Now' as a reason for his active support" of "The Journal Editorial Report."