Where do you go when your viewpoints are too ‘liberal’ for a ‘liberal’ TV station? If you’re Bill Moyers, you take a short break and then hit the lecture circuit.
And from there, this indispensable voice in independent American journalism, delivers blow after blow to his mediocre detractors:
“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 to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; 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. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence…”
And more:
“One reason I’m in hot water is because my colleagues and I at “NOW” didn’t play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if, instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news…”
If you’d watched public television in this country over the last 30 or so years, by now you must know who Bill Moyers is. Few people both in public or commercial TV rise to his journalistic standard, think of his investigative pieces covering Watergate and Iran-Contra to name just a couple.
Truly, how many news anchors can one say are really working hard in maintaining the standard of journalism safely above the info-tainment standard?
I can’t think of that many. After 9/11, any hint of liberal views became an unpatriotic sin in this country and those harboring them, -like Bill Moyers- became targets of concerted efforts to silence their opinions and viewpoints.
Thank God for the Internet, or for Speaker Series like the one offered by the Music Center featuring Bill Moyers on Monday, Feb 6 at 8pm at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. Rush and get your tickets to see this American icon, at least in what concerns serious journalism.
Come and hear him discuss current world affairs with the true knowledge of a seasoned journalist who’s managed to maintain a fairly impeccable reputation in a transient TV world where anchors and journalist alike seem to be nothing but clones of each other, populating an insipid news-feeding system carefully mixed with the right dose of violence, police chases and Hollywood glitz.
Bill Moyers: “Hear me: an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion 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, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.”
Bill Moyers speaks at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion as part of the Music Center Speaker Series. For ticket information, go to http://www.musiccenter.org/
