The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has named Milton Coleman as its new ombudsman, effective Feb. 1.
Coleman is a former senior editor with The Washington Post. He left the paper in 2012. "Public media has an increasingly important role in our ever more diverse democracy,” said Coleman in a statement. “Hopefully, I can do whatever I can to help that media serve that need in the best of ways."
Coleman was confirmed by the board of directors for a three-year term. He succeeds Joel Kaplan.
Before joining the Post in 1976, Coleman was with the Milwaukee Courier, the African World newspaper, the All-African News Service, WHUR-FM Washington, the Community News Service of New York, and the Minneapolis Star.
The ombudsman's office was established in 2005 amidst charges by then CPB chairman Ken Tomlinson of a liberal bias in some of the noncom programming funded by CPB, which distributes the approximately 15%, on average, of noncommercial station budget supplied by government funding.
CPB oversees the distribution of government funds to noncommercial radio and TV.
