We all need something to get us out of bed. Here’s what gets me up in the morning: Bill Moyers on truth and
journalism. If you’ve got a few minutes — OK, 30 minutes — have a
look at him speaking recently at the National Conference on Media Reform in Madison, Wisc.
Moyer’s keynote address is powerful and eloquent and delivers the sort of wisdom you may
encounter in private but rarely in public discourse. (Click on the link above and then click on
“Watch 256k stream.”)
Moyers defines three forces that shape the information the public needs to know and
how it is (or isn’t) communicated: 1) the age-old “reluctance of government — even
democratically elected government — to operate in the sunshine”; 2) the more recent
“tendency of megamedia giants to exalt commercial values over democratic values”; and
3) the emergence of “a quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an
authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the
world.”
If you’d rather just read Moyers’ remarks, here’s the transcript. (Unfortunately it’s riddled with typos
and transcription errors, and it’s missing many of his remarks.) But let me give you a taste
of what he said:
In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom
with the blunt instruments of the law: padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors
and writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and the Constitution
struck those weapons out of their hands. But they’ve found new ones now, in the name of
“national security.” The classifier’s Top Secret stamp, used indiscriminately, is as potent a silencer
as a writ of arrest. And beyond what is officially labeled “secret” there hovers a culture of sealed
official lips, opened only to favored media insiders: of government by leak and innuendo and spin,
of misnamed “public information” offices that churn out blizzards of releases filled with
self-justifying exaggerations and, occasionally, just plain damned lies. Censorship without
officially appointed censors.
He points a damning finger at the thuggish gang in the White House, its corporate cronies and
media goons:
Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely
in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and — in defiance of the Constitution
— from their representatives in Congress. Never has so powerful a media oligopoly — the word is
Barry Diller’s, not mine — been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and
power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political
debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people’s need to
know.
And Moyers names names:
I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to
an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in
the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas today in a phenomenon
unique in our history. You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right-wing conspiracy to think
this collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for
power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. Stretching
from the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch’s empire
to the nattering nabobs of know-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by
conglomerates — the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for
sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic
ideals embodied in our founding documents.
Without a “strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony,” Moyers tells
us, “it is left to journalism to be democracy’s best friend.” Which is why the bid by Federal
Communications Commission chief Michael Powell “to permit further concentration of media
ownership” — and which has been “blessed by the White House” — is so dangerous. “If free and
independent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the
oxygen goes out of democracy. And there is no surer way to intimidate and then silence
mainstream journalists than to be their boss.” It’s not just Murdoch or the Journal’s editorial
page and their ilk who are to blame. It’s so-called liberals, too:
And then there’s Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS. In the very week that
the once-Tiffany Network was celebrating its 75th anniversary — and taking kudos for its glory
days when it was unafraid to broadcast “The Harvest of Shame” and “The Selling of the
Pentagon” — the network’s famous eye blinked. Pressured by a vociferous and relentless
right-wing campaign and bullied by the Republican National Committee — and at a time when its
parent company has billions resting on whether the White House, Congress, and the FCC will
allow it to own even more stations than currently permissible — CBS caved in and pulled the
miniseries about Ronald Reagan that conservatives thought insufficiently worshipful. … Granted,
made-for-television movies about living figures are about as vital as the wax figures at Madame
Tussaud’s — and even less authentic — granted that the canonizers of Ronald Reagan hadn’t even
seen the film before they set to howling; granted, on the surface it’s a silly tempest in a teapot;
still, when a once-great network falls obsequiously to the ground at the feet of a partisan mob
over a cheesy mini-series that practically no one would have taken seriously as history, you have
to wonder if the slight tremor that just ran through the First Amendment could be the harbinger of
greater earthquakes to come, when the stakes are really high. And you have to wonder what
concessions the media tycoons-cum-supplicants are making when no one is
looking.
Moyers’s remarks touch on the dangers of a megamogul such as Italy’s “richest citizen,” who
just happens to be its prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi; who just happens to control directly or
indirectly Italy’s “state television networks and radio stations, three of its four commercial
television networks, two big publishing houses, two national newspapers, 50 magazines, the
country’s largest movie production-and-distribution company, and a chunk of its Internet
services.”
Citing Jane Kramer’s New Yorker piece about the prime minister, Moyers notes that one
critic says “half the reporters in Italy work for Berlusconi, and the other half think they might have
to. Small wonder he has managed to put the Italian state to work to guarantee his fortune — or
that his name is commonly attached to such unpleasant things as contempt for the law, conflict of
interest, bribery, and money laundering.” Nonetheless, “his power over what other Italians see,
read, buy, and, above all, think, is overwhelming.” And who is “Berlusconi’s close friend?” he
asks. None other than Rupert Murdoch. Last July “programming on nearly all the satellite
hookups in Italy was switched automatically to Murdoch’s Sky Italia,” according to Kramer. What
a surprise.
Moyers offers anecdotal tales about the first American newspaper editor, Benjamin Harris,
whose Boston paper, not incidentally, was shut down by the Massachusetts government in 1690,
and the printer Peter Zenger printer who was jailed 40 years later in New York “for criticizing its
royal governor,” but who was found innocent by a jury. It was swayed in large measure
by the defense lawyer’s summation, which declared that Zenger’s case was:
Not the cause of the poor Printer, nor of New York alone, [but] the cause of
Liberty, and … every Man who prefers Freedom to a Life of Slavery will bless and honour You, as
Men who … by an impartial and uncorrupt Verdict, [will] have laid a Noble Foundation for
securing to ourselves, our Posterity and our Neighbors, That, to which Nature and the Laws of
our Country have given us a Right, the Liberty — both of exposing and opposing arbitrary Power
— by speaking and writing — Truth.
Moyers, let’s remember, is no wild radical. He’s a mainstream liberal with long
experience both in government and in journalism.
I am older than almost all of you and am not likely to be around for the
duration; I have said for several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn 70
next year. But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter Zenger, Thomas
Paine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who
faced odds no less than ours and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It’s your fight
now. Look around. You are not alone.
Let’s hope he’s right and wasn’t ending on a cheerful note just because he was addressing
like-minded journalists. His keynote speech was, in fact, a severe storm warning. It’s
Moyers’ warning more than the happy-face assurance of his concluding
remarks that must be taken seriously.
