A three-part PBS series about the Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz has come under scrutiny in recent days for its financing ties to his friends and associates.

Michael Getler, the PBS ombudsman, sided with the critics, writing in a column on PBS.org that the series suffered from “at least the appearance of a conflict of interest” due to the financial contributions.

“It doesn’t mean that funders exerted any editorial influence, but it left me feeling they didn’t have to,” Mr. Getler said.

The funding ties were listed in a review in The New York Times, and liberal media monitoring groups like FAIR subsequently encouraged people to complain to PBS. FAIR asserted that that seven of the 13 underwriters of the series have “close ties” to the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank where Mr. Shultz is a distinguished fellow.

Even before the first installment of the series, “Turmoil and Triumph,” had its debut last Monday, it was knocked by television critics for being too long and for treating its subject with reverence. Mr. Getler said he thought the “deification of Shultz” was both unnecessary and distracting.

Critics also seized on the fact that the documentary does not delve into Mr. Shultz’s support for the Iraq war or the fact that he served on the board of Bechtel, which earned hundreds of millions of dollars in rebuilding contracts. A Bechtel family foundation was one of the funders of the documentary.

The series’ producer, David deVries, said in a statement to Mr. Getler that “throughout the almost three years it took me to create the series, I was completely unaware of who the funders were.” (In response, FAIR said Tuesday that the producer needn’t be aware of the funders’ identities because the company behind the series, Free to Choose Media, “consistently” produces conservative projects.)

The third installment of the series will be shown next Monday. PBS said in a statement that it believed the series “fully meets our standards for editorial integrity,” and reiterated that “no PBS funder is permitted to exercise editorial control over content.”

The public broadcaster also stated that the ties to Bechtel “did not preclude funding from the related family foundation under the circumstances since subject matter of the program was Shultz’s role as Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, not his role in the corporation.”

The motivations and the political leanings of underwriters occasionally stoke controversy for PBS, which relies on funding from the government, private groups and individuals. Mr. Getler has criticized PBS on a handful of other occasions for documentaries that had questionable backers.

“PBS, of course, does many excellent documentaries, but there clearly are times when the funding support diminishes credibility,” Mr. Getler said in an e-mail message Tuesday.

This reminds me of AIM’s own experience in 1983 and 1984 when we produced a one hour documentary on entitled Television’s Vietnam with Charlton Heston as our narrator.  The film was a response to a 13-part PBS series on the war there and was very one sided to say the least.  After a lot of cajoling PBS agreed to air our rebuttal but took such heat from the left that they reneged on a verbal agreement to air the second film we produced on the subject which dealt with the media’s role in Vietnam.

We did okay though as we paid to air the second hour when it was completed the following year and even managed to get TBS to air it twice which brought in far more response than PBS.  And that was when Ted Turner was in charge.

In any case the point here is that liberals are perfectly happy with PBS airing their propaganda but as soon as the network goes off the reservation the criticism is fast and furious.

PBS has aired so little in the way of positive programming for conservatives that I wouldn’t be surprised that if the Shultz documentary is the last one of its type that will be seen on the network for a very long time now thanks to the lefty attacks.