Excerpts of Bill Moyers' closing address at the National Convention on Media Reform
To view the whole address, go to... http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-34.htm
But here are some of my favorite parts:
"This is always hard to do (honest reporting without a right-wing spin) , but it’s never been harder. 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 will be left behind, while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged children; they give us legislation cheerily calling for clear skies and healthy forests that give us neither, while turning over our public lands to the energy industry. In Orwell’s 1984 the character Syme, one of the writers of that totalitarian society’s dictionary, explains to the protagonist, Winston, 'Don’t you see? Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050 at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we’re having right now. The whole climate of thought,” he said, “will be different. In fact, there will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'".........
....."Apparently there was apoplexy in the right wing area, particularly when I closed the broadcast one Friday night by putting a flag in my lapel and said – well, here’s exactly what I said. Here’s a copy of what I said: “I wore my flag tonight, first time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see. It was enough to vote, pay my taxes, perform my civic duties, speak my mind and do my best to raise our kids to be good Americans. Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustain me, whose armed forces protected me and whose ideals inspired me. I offered my heart’s affection in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother’s picture on my lapel to prove her son’s love. Mother knew where I stood. So does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax returns on April 15th. So what’s this doing here? I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo, the trademark – the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On most Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it’s the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. During the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official labels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book of orthodoxy on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread.
”But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapel while writing books and running web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American. They are people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They’re in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks, even as they call for spending more on war. ”So I put this on as a modest repose to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks. or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don’t have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government, and it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war, except in self defense, is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.”"
Rush Limbaugh didn't like Bill Moyers' speech..... (gasp!)
Article from commondreams.org about Bill Moyers' comments......
Published on Saturday, May 21, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Rush to Judgment
Limbaugh Leads the Echo Chamber’s Attack on Bill Moyers
by Craig Aaron and Timothy Karr
Bill Moyers gave an historic speech last Sunday in St. Louis, a clarion defense of quality journalism and public broadcasting from the partisan attacks of the White House and its minions at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
“CPB was established almost 40 years ago to set broad policy for public broadcasting and to be a firewall between political influence and program content,” Moyers told a packed house at the National Conference for Media Reform, lambasting CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson’s personal crusade against “liberal advocacy” journalism at PBS. “We’re seeing unfold a contemporary example of the age-old ambition of power and ideology to squelch and punish journalists who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable.”
The speech is ricocheting around the Internet and has been broadcast nationwide on TV and radio. The right-wing responded by going into attack mode. On Thursday, Rush Limbaugh went apoplectic, unleashing an on-air tirade against Moyers. Limbaugh had taken a break from his golf game to watch a few minutes of the hour-long speech on C-SPAN2 because he’d heard “my name was taken in vain so often.” (And Limbaugh accuses Moyers of having a God complex.)
Moyers’ speech didn’t mention Limbaugh once. But Rush may have recognized himself in a few of Moyers’ pronouncements. For instance: “The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party gets. That’s because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned as a liberal is to tell the truth.”
Unable to impugn Moyers credentials -- after all, he’s a former White House staffer with three decades in the television news business and countless Emmy awards -- Rush questioned his sanity. In less than 30 seconds, he dismissed media reformers and Moyers as “unhinged,” “literally insane” and “off their rockers.”
Incapable of winning this debate based on the facts, the best the right-wing media can do is trot out their A-list cast of bloviators, engage in fact-challenged character assassination, and hope that’s enough to fire up the right-wing echo chamber. (They’re using the same tactics to try to take down Newspaper Guild chief Linda Foley for daring to question why so many journalists are being killed by U.S. forces in Iraq.) When reason fails, they always have volume.
Over at the CPB, Tomlinson relies on the same tactics of innuendo. But when it comes to the facts, he’s far less forthcoming. He paid a consultant $10,000 to monitor Moyers’ program for signs of “liberal bias.” (Moyers left “NOW” at the end of last year.) The guest list of Moyers program includes characters from across the political spectrum, including conservative movement leaders Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed and Richard Viquerie. This wasn’t good enough for Tomlinson. His decision to pay someone to monitor “liberal bias” at “NOW” has prompted Reps. John Dingell (D-MICH.) and David Obey (D-WIS.) to request an investigation by the CPB's inspector general into charges “of political interference into public broadcasting.”
Tomlinson refuses to release the results of this spying, claiming that they might “damage public broadcasting’s image with controversy.”
But it seems far more likely that he just didn’t like the conclusions.
After all, this is the CPB chairman who buried a survey commissioned by his own agency when its results confirmed that “the majority of the U.S. adult population does not believe that the news and information programming on public broadcasting is biased.” In that same survey, 80 percent of Americans agreed that PBS is “fair and balanced,” and more than 50 percent found PBS news programming to be more trustworthy than network television or the cable networks.
Moyers has challenged Tomlinson to join him for an hour on PBS to discuss these facts and the current controversy. Thus far, Tomlinson has declined, preferring to spend his time writing columns for the Washington Times and fielding softball questions on Fox News. (Tomlinson told Bill O’Reilly: “We love your show.”)
Even when he ventured onto NPR, Tomlinson showed he still doesn’t get it. When his description of Moyers’ show was challenged by WAMU’s Diane Rehm, he quipped: “Am I gonna have to go back and hire another consultant and demonstrate this is incorrect?"
Now, the public is telling Tomlinson what it really thinks of his efforts to remake public broadcasting as a mouthpiece for right-wing views. More than 75,000 concerned citizens already have signed a petition calling for Tomlinson’s resignation (add your name here) and supporting the creation of nationwide town hall meetings on the future of public broadcasting.
These public hearings -- which have been endorsed by Moyers -- would give average people the chance to meet face-to-face with station managers, elected officials and federal regulators to express what they want and expect from their public broadcasting system. It’s the first step in putting the public back in PBS.
We suspect public hearings will show, once and for all, that public broadcasting isn’t a left-right, liberal-or-conservative issue. Listening to the public will make it clear that millions of Americans across the political spectrum are outraged by ongoing government efforts to manipulate the media and public opinion. Americans don’t need more shouting heads and partisan posturing. They want quality journalism, diversity of views and reliable information. Apparently, these are ideas that make Tomlinson and Limbaugh squirm.
