Bill Moyers

File:BillMoyers.jpg

Bill Moyers

William Daniel Moyers (born June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and public commentator.

He was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, and was raised in Texas. Moyers began his journalism career at age 16 as a cub reporter at the Marshall News Messenger in Marshall, Texas. He and his wife, Judith Davidson Moyers, have three grown children and five grandchildren. He is currently president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.

Early life

Bill Moyers studied journalism at North Texas University. In 1954, he worked as a summer intern for Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, eventually being in charge of Johnson's personal mail before his internship was finished. Moyers soon transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. While in Austin, Moyers worked as an assistant to the news editor for KTBC Radio and Television, a station owned by Lady Bird Johnson. In 1957, he received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He joined as special assistant to Lyndon Johnson during his Vice Presidential campaign in 1960.

Public service

During the Kennedy Administration, Moyers was appointed as Deputy Director of the Peace Corps (1961–63). When Lyndon Baines Johnson took office after the Kennedy assassination, Moyers became special Assistant to President Johnson, serving 1963–1967. From July 1965 to February 1967, he also served as White House Press Secretary.

Journalism

Best known for his work as a journalist, Moyers has been awarded over thirty Emmys and virtually every other major television journalism prize, including a gold baton from the Dupont Journalism awards and a lifetime Peabody award. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been the recipient of numerous honorary university degrees.

He served as publisher for the Long Island, New York, daily Newsday from 1967 to 1970.

In 1972, he began working for the PBS network in the public area of New York to begin hosting a news program called Bill Moyers' Journal, which ran until 1976.

In 1986, Moyers and his wife Judith Davidson formed Public Affairs Television. Among their first productions was the popular PBS series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (1988).

Moyers hosted the TV news journal, NOW with Bill Moyers, on PBS for three years. He retired from the program on December 17, 2004 but returned to PBS soon after to host Wide Angle in 2005.

Political Commentary

Regarding the U.S. Media

Claims concerning the Media & Class Warfare

In a 2003 interview with BuzzFlash.com, Moyers said, "The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they've won. The rich are getting richer, which arguably wouldn't matter if the rising tide lifted all boats."

"But the inequality gap is the widest its been since 1929; the middle class is besieged and the working poor are barely keeping their heads above water. The corporate and governing elites are helping themselves to the spoils of victory -- politics, when all is said and done, comes down to who gets what and who pays for it -- while the public is distracted by the media circus and news has been neutered or politicized for partisan purposes."

In support of this he referred to "the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero."

Subsequently in the same interview, he added, "As Eric Alterman reports in his recent book — a book that I'm proud to have helped make happen — part of the red meat strategy is to attack mainstream media relentlessly, knowing that if the press is effectively intimidated, either by the accusation of liberal bias or by a reporter's own mistaken belief in the charge's validity, the institutions that conservatives revere — corporate America, the military, organized religion, and their own ideological bastions of influence — will be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence over American public life with relatively no challenge."[1].

Charges of U.S. Media Bias

When he retired in December 2004, the AP News Service quoted Moyers, "I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."

Politics

Concerning Karl Rove & U.S. Politics

During his speech at the "Take Back America" Conference, Moyers defined what he considered to be Karl Rove's influence on George W. Bush's administration. Moyers asserted that, from his reading of Rove, the mid-to-late 1800's were a "cherished period of American history." He further states that, "From his own public comments and my reading of the record, it is apparent that Karl Rove has modeled the Bush presidency on that of William McKinley........and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley [[2]]."

He stipulated that Hanna's primary "passion" was attending to corporate and imperial power; Moyers quoted Hanna, "without compunction, (that) the state of Ohio existed for property. It had no other function...Great wealth was to be gained through monopoly, through using the State for private ends; it was axiomatic therefore that businessmen should run the government and run it for personal profit[[3]]."

Furthermore, Moyers indicates that Hanna gathered support for McKinley's presidential campaign from "the corporate interests of the day" and was responsible for Ohio and Washington coming under the rule of "bankers, railroads and public utility corporations." He submitted that political opponents of this transfer of power were, "smeared as disturbers of the peace, socialists, anarchists, 'or worse.'[[4]]"

Lastly, he refers to what historian Clinton Rossiter called the period of "the great train robbery of American intellectual history," when "conservatives & pro-corporate apologists" began using terminology like "progress", "opportunity", and "individualism" in order to make "the plunder of America sound like divine right." He added that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was also used by conservative politicians, judges, and publicists to justify the idea of a "natural order of things", as well as "the notion that progress resulted from the elimination of the weak and the 'survival of the fittest.'[[5]]"

He concludes that, "This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove; the reputed brain of George W. Bush; as the seminal age of inspiration for the politics and governance of America today.[[6]]"

Expectations of Possible Right-wing Reactions if Kerry won in 2004

During coverage of the 2004 presidential election, Moyers stated, "I think that if Kerry were to win this in a tight race, I think that there would be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly. I mean that the right-wing is not going to accept it [7]."

Criticism

Claims regarding Liberal Bias

Moyers has been the subject of accusations of liberal bias from some quarters. In 2005, former Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson commissioned a study of the show NOW with Bill Moyers. The study supported what Tomlinson characterized as "the image of the left-wing bias of NOW"[8]. Moyers responded to these accusations in a speech given to the National Conference for Media Reform[9]. Tomlinson subsequently resigned on 4 November 2005 after a CPB inquiry into the commissioning of the study.

Moyers' frequent criticism of conservatives and conservatism has led conservative critics to label him a liberal commentator rather than an objective journalist[10].

Moyers has drawn further allegations of bias in his role as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, [11]. In 2003 the center gave money to a variety of establishments which have been described as "left leaning," such as Sojourners magazine ($500,000), Salon.com ($277,785) and The Nation magazine ($115,000)[12]. After reviewing these donations David Horowitz's Discover the Network website has asserted that "Bill Moyers has dropped any pretense of objectivity".

External links

• Museum of Broadcast Communications
• America Responds
• NOW with Bill Moyers
• Audio of Bill Moyers Speech at 2005 National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis
• Quicktime video of Moyers Speech at 2005 National Conference for Media Reform
• Talk at Paramount Theater in Seattle on April 2005 as part of Foolproof's American Voices series & KUOW Speakers Forum
• Peace Corps biography of Bill Moyers
• Moyers' retirement from NOW announced
  • • • thhis website is good if you think hes sexy: http://www.billmoyersequalssexgod.blogspot.com/