Barring Mr. Moyers running for president, can we at least take a DNA sample, and clone him? The U.S. media business desperately needs about 50 journalists of Moyers credibility, gravitas and intellectual honesty.
Bill Moyers Fights Back | John Nichols:
Bill Moyers is not taking attacks by Bush administration allies on public broadcasting in general and his journalism in particular sitting down.
“I should put my detractors on notice,” declared the veteran journalist who stepped down in January as the host of PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers, who recently turned 70. “They might compel me out of the rocking chair and into the anchor chair.”... [in a] pointed reference to CPB chair Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican party stalwart, who contracted with an outside consultant to monitor Moyers's weekly news program for signs of what Tomlinson and his allies perceived to be liberal bias. Moyers ridiculed the initiative first by reading off a long list of conservatives who had appeared on NOW, then by reading a letter from conservative U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, praising the show, and finally by noting that Tomlinson had paid a former Bush White House aide $10,000 to do the monitoring. “Gee, Ken, for $2 a week you can pick up a copy of TV Guide,” he joked, before suggesting that the CPB chair could have “watched the show.” “Hell, Ken,” Moyers finally said. “you could have called me collect and I would have told you.” Moyers said he wasn't buying Tomlinson's claim that the results of the monitoring were not being released to protect PBS's image. “Where I come from in Texas, we shovel that stuff every day,”...Moyers revealed to the crowd of 2,000 media reform activists that he had written Tomlinson on Friday, suggesting that the pair appear on a PBS program to discuss the controversy. He also revealed that he had tried three times to meet with the full CPB board but had been refused. Expressing his sense that the board had “crossed the line from resisting White House pressure to carrying it out,” Moyers said, “I would like to give Mr. Tomlinson the benefit of the doubt, but I can't.”
The man who has won 30 Emmy Awards for his hosting of various PBS programs was blunt about his critics. “They've been after me for years now and I am sure they will be stomping on my grave after I'm dead,” he said.
Full transcript here
(update 7/2006: apparently Molly Ivins and John Nichols both agree with me.)
Tags: B12 recommended, /Current Affairs, /Quotables
"Kenneth Tomlinson has his demanding donors. I’ll take the widow’s mite any day." I'll start believing him, as well as take him up on his offer, when he says he would rather have the $500 than the $400 million from Uncle Sam. See Raging Bill
I don't know what you mean. Who receives 400 million?
See http://www.npr.org/about/urbanmyth.html for congressional appropriations for CPB.
Look, I'm a dense liberal atheist. What exactly do you mean? Are you saying that Bill Moyers receives 400 million from Congress? I don't think he receives anything, as he no longer even is an employee there, as far as I know. Or do you mean that Moyers' update of the New Testament parable is meaningless because PBS takes money both from Congress and individual donors?
Look, PBS is beholden to corporate, conservative interests, there is no doubt. But, as I see it, Moyers isn't complaining about congressional funding, he's complaining about regulation of speech as a condition of funding. And Moyers' show, Now, was not conservative, even though they had many, many conservatives as guests.
Please correct me.
If you want him to run, then go to:
http://billmoyersforpresident.org!
He is our best hope!
[good idea! I will]
Bill Moyers is the best. But then, so was Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader. I wonder how electable he would be?
If I could, I would say that he needs a simple but revolutionary platform. I for one will never again vote for democrat republican-lites.
I would tell Mr. Moyers that media monopoly and wealth/power concentration apply to indidviduals, not just corporations. One person like Murdoch is often a monopoly in and of himself. That progressive taxation cannot close the income gap because them with the gold make the rules.
One way to close the gap is to stop monopolies where they begin, at the individual level. To limit power concentration by limiting wealth concentration at the individual level.
This can be done incorruptibly and non-burocratically by the insertion of a simple cancelbot in the world's banking and credit system that simply deletes all personal electronic funds beyond a yearly direct democratically established cap. This cap should be high enough to preserve the profit motive but low enough to prevent extreme wealth/power concentration.
I won't delve further into this wealth/power cap idea but to say that I think it would make a great and revolutionary platform for Mr. Moyers, should he decide to run.
More ideas for Mr. Moyer's platform--
How to get out of Iraq now while making Iraqis love us:
Give each Iraqi man, woman and child an equal share of their oil stock, then leave.