Bill Moyers gets better and better with age, whether mine or his I could not tell you. He may be the last good Texan.
Today in his keynote address he drove straight to the issues of polarization due to wealth and privilege and the grasping tendency of our privileged elite to operate as if growth is only possible if the wealth is concentrated in their hands rather than fairly distributed across the population, across the economy. He points the finger of truth at the immensely wealthy executives and investors who have lobbied for less and less accountability until now there is a small group of privileged elite who monopolize the means of information and determine what the people do not see and hear. What we see fom the couch is detemined by the people at the top.
Was it ever thus? I don’t think so, and I don’t think Bill Moyers thinks so either
For me, Moyers joined the ranks of the most powerful orators with his address this morning at the National Conference on Media Reform. Maybe I’ve been cool to him because of his relationship with Lyndon, or maybe just because I never grasped the honest idealism that motivated his speech this morning. He was ringing the language like a bell… tossing off descriptive phrases like “highly disciplined coordinated political noise machine” and stringing those descriptors together with power and meaning until it was impossible not to recognize who runs big media, and why, and how, and how we are diminished by our loss of public and honest media control in the USA.
The current generation of miscreants in Washington DC and their big media teams have stripped the meaning from concepts like “fairness” and “political responsibility.” They leave us instead with coinages and framings like “death tax,” “ownership society,” clash of civilizations,” and “no child left behind.” Indeed the “escalation of a frail war” was somehow morphed into a “’surge’ as if it were current on a wire istead of blood spurting from the ruptured veins of a soldier.” Concepts lie “family values” have been given a sectarian definition. “Patriotism” is equated with public support for failed leaders.
Resources for investigative and interpretative journalism are contracting, despite the opening of the net. Moyers is biased toward print, “print counts most,” he says, especially print that devotes resources to original investigation and news. But newpapers are being driven down by Wall Street.
We live in age of censorship as embarrassingly repressive as the excesses of Charles the First or our own home grown Sedition Act that attempted to repress free speech in 1796. “National security” is a new rubric for censorship. A “plantation mentality” governs the coverage of the goings on in Washington. Knight Ridder was a notable exception. Perhaps the height of jo8urnalistic myopia came with the admission by a prominent anchor that his responsibility was to provide a platform for public officials to be heard.
Moyers says it’s the journalists’ job to ask lobbyists and congress alike “who really wags the system?” “Whose financial interests are you advancing with this bill?” Free trade today has the power of a biblical commandment, broader negative consequences of a free trade bill get no coverages. Moyers relates how Thomas Friedman (”poobah of punditry”) has only to declare that the world is flat and we take his word for it without going to the edge and looking over. Whether or not our economic system is truly just is off the table for discussion. Back to the plantation metaphor Moyers pointed out that it doesn’t take much for the field hands to see that “slavery ain’t the product of intelligent design… something is wrong with the system.”
“The moment you realize someone else has been writing your story is the moment that freedom begins.”
The greatest challenge to the media giants is the digital revolution, and while Bill may prefer newspapers, he isn’t denying the great gift of the digital revolution that we must never let them take away from us.
Quick notes…
public responsibility, convenience and necessity … fcc act of 1934… people want the media to foster democracy not quench it…
michael copps and jonathan adelstein two of the most public spirited people to sit on the FCC
open net… not if, but when and how…
internet freedom preservation act of 2024
danny schechter/mediachannel.org
andy schwarzman, jeff chester, digital destiny
“brandwashing of america”
chester’s book offers a policy agenda for the net
MEDIA REFORM… going to the market to find support for progressive expression… organize a campaign to get the local PBS to broadcast “Democracy Now” without alternative content this country is going to die of too many lies… the truth lies where the facts are hidden and Amy digs for them. Moyers may be a little hot for Amy Goodman…
April Bill Moyers will be back with a weekly series: “Bill Moyers Journal”
He closed his oration with a Marge Piercy poem:
The low road
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know you who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.-Marge Piercy
From “The Moon is Always Female”, published by
Alfred A. Knopf, Copyright 1980 by Marge Piercy.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I would vote for Bill Moyers for President if he ever ran and I were an American … just because he is honest, smart, sensible and realizes the nation and the world are made up of mant different people, not only white and wealthy and xtian peoplr … and because he understands well and clearly how cacked up the MSM is and why.
John Nichols, acting as master of ceremonies, upon Moyers’ departure from the stage yesterday said much the same thing, Jon.
Flipping cable channels, I caught only the tail of Moyers’ speech and circuit revival. I admire conviction, and better, I admire a dedicated effort to nourish this world rather than parade a trumpish ingenuity to extract the world’s prizes.
Moyers leads us as much in his motive as in his labor.
The keywords I remembered a couple days later were ‘two keep each other sane’. I wasn’t surprised that Google easily pointed me to the diligent Frank Poynter blog, a good labor, written in the signature of paying attention.
I thank you, Frank, and for citing Marge Piercy.
It’s true. “It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care…”