Bill Moyers Rocks
I wanted to share a little of Bill Moyers' speech at the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis the other night; I only caught part of it on C-Span, but luckily Salon.com has it posted on their site today. Click here to see it, although be warned that because it's salon.com you might have to sit through a commercial first.
Bill Moyers is a relic in this age of demagogues posing as journalists and cable-TV shout-shows passing for public discourse. He actually still believes in journalism, and that "news is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity." For this he has been relentlessly demonized by the right wing in their usual character-assassination style. They probably thought they had heard the last from him when he retired from his show NOW six months ago, but as this speech makes clear, they were wrong.
If you don't want to wade throught he whole rather lengthy piece (or just don't want to sit through Salon's commercials) here are a few of the best bits:
For those in power and their right-wing media minions who attack him:
Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control, using the government to threaten and intimidate. I mean the people who are hollowing out middle-class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class in a war to make sure Ahmed Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq's oil. I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into a slush fund and who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets. I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy.
About the state of journalism today:
The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party became. That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.
This is the point of my story: Ideologues don't want you to go beyond the typical labels of left and right. They embrace a worldview that can't be proven wrong because they will admit no evidence to the contrary. They want your reporting to validate their belief system and when it doesn't, God forbid. . . . No, our reporting was giving the radical right fits because it wasn't the party line. It wasn't that we were getting it wrong. Only three times in three years did we err factually, and in each case we corrected those errors as soon as we confirmed their inaccuracy. The problem was that we were getting it right, not right-wing -- telling stories that partisans in power didn't want told.
And perhaps my favorite bit, on public policy:
Without a trace of irony, the powers-that-be have appropriated the newspeak vernacular of George Orwell's "1984." They give us a program vowing "No Child Left Behind" while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged kids. They give us legislation cheerily calling for "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" that give us neither. And that's just for starters.
* * *
An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only on partisan information and opinions that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical. That kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy -- or worse.
I sure hope Bill comes through on his thinly-veiled threat to return to the anchor's chair, and that he stays at least long enough for a few more like him to come along.
Bill Moyers is a relic in this age of demagogues posing as journalists and cable-TV shout-shows passing for public discourse. He actually still believes in journalism, and that "news is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity." For this he has been relentlessly demonized by the right wing in their usual character-assassination style. They probably thought they had heard the last from him when he retired from his show NOW six months ago, but as this speech makes clear, they were wrong.
If you don't want to wade throught he whole rather lengthy piece (or just don't want to sit through Salon's commercials) here are a few of the best bits:
For those in power and their right-wing media minions who attack him:
Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control, using the government to threaten and intimidate. I mean the people who are hollowing out middle-class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class in a war to make sure Ahmed Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq's oil. I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into a slush fund and who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets. I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy.
About the state of journalism today:
The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party became. That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.
This is the point of my story: Ideologues don't want you to go beyond the typical labels of left and right. They embrace a worldview that can't be proven wrong because they will admit no evidence to the contrary. They want your reporting to validate their belief system and when it doesn't, God forbid. . . . No, our reporting was giving the radical right fits because it wasn't the party line. It wasn't that we were getting it wrong. Only three times in three years did we err factually, and in each case we corrected those errors as soon as we confirmed their inaccuracy. The problem was that we were getting it right, not right-wing -- telling stories that partisans in power didn't want told.
And perhaps my favorite bit, on public policy:
Without a trace of irony, the powers-that-be have appropriated the newspeak vernacular of George Orwell's "1984." They give us a program vowing "No Child Left Behind" while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged kids. They give us legislation cheerily calling for "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" that give us neither. And that's just for starters.
* * *
An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only on partisan information and opinions that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical. That kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy -- or worse.
I sure hope Bill comes through on his thinly-veiled threat to return to the anchor's chair, and that he stays at least long enough for a few more like him to come along.
posted by Yukon Sully | 1:32 PM
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