On Bill Moyers
May 20th, 2005Courtesy of long-time UPI reporter and professor Ted Stannard from the UPI Downhold Wire on Bill Moyers, the state of public broadcasting and what can be done in the face of the controversy, republished here with permission.
While dressing this week, I watched a major chunk of Moyer’s media reform
speech on C-Span. Sorkin’s St.Louis P-D story gives the gist and flavor well,
but omits the detailed, sarcastic and very direct zapping of CPB chief
Tomlinson by name.Moyers take on Tomlinson was extensive, pointed and withering, with some lovely
sardonic comment on his spending of $10,000 in public funds to research what a
subscription to TV Guide or a phone call to Moyers could have accomplished –
and then denying public access to the research results. I’m surprised Sorkin
gave most of it a pass.Moyers, in my view, is the most eloquent, rational and forceful liberal voice
on public and church podiums today. For those who haven’t seen them, check out
these lucid, substantive and impassioned talks in the past year:Fight of Our Lives, NYU Keynote,Inequality Matters Forum
The Society of Professional Journalists 2004 National Convention
Riverside Church, New York City
Second National Conference on Media Reform
Moyer brings to the rostrum an amazing blend of precise intellectual nuance and
skilled, impassioned oratory. It is in the best liberal tradition to make
people think and stir them to care. It was once in the best conservative
tradition too, before the conservative label was hijacked by a power-hungry
alliance of military-minded neocons and assorted monomaniacal elements of the
apoplectic and apocalyptic right.Moyers reflects the rising concern among many Christians that these “true
believers” in the Eric Hoffer sense, having already to an alarming degree
swarmed the centerstage and seized the microphone, are now positioning
themselves as speaking not just for THEIR faith, but for THE Christian faith -
very much as the militant Islamist radicals in the Middle East have seized the
microphones of the neighborhood mosques, the center stages in their societies,
to claim to speak for all Islam.How the evangelical spread across the American broadcast spectrum is coming to
dominate and sometimes drown out other voices gets a richly informative,
on-topic look in the current Columbia Journalism Review:STATIONS OF THE CROSS, By Mariah Blake, CJR May-June 2005:
How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news.It would be interesting to hear comment on this piece from, among others, our
LatAm DHer in mission broadcasting - whatever his perspective.But let’s all keep in mind that any discourse involving religion and politics should
distinguish between religious organizations and structures, and religion as a
body of personal values and beliefs. The one hosts the other, but does not
necessarily rule it.Oh yes! For an outraged voice from outside the “faith-based community,”
checkout Nicholas Hoffman’s May 5 rant in the New York Observer, still
available free on an offcenter range of sites, including The Smoking Chimp.He makes a strong point about the implications of the term.
The genius of “framing,” brilliantly utilized politically by Rove and Co., is in
popularizing phrases or terms in some issue of the moment which get picked up
in the general buzz without analyzing or challenging tendentious underlying
assumptions. By using the phrase, we in effect treat those unexamined
underlying assumptions as a “given” and tacitly validate their perspective.These would be good times for American culture to throw up some heavyweight
political philosphers - powerful, articulate thinkers who could command some
attention - to debate and clarify questions and durable principles important
to 21st Century societies and challenges.Just going with the flow is no option when you can hear the mounting roar of a
cataract ahead; we need to decide which direction to paddle -and how hard.
Blog on . . .
May 20th, 2005 at 11:29 am
Good points all, professor. The problem is that academics are just as afraid of concerted attacks from the Christian Right these days as newspaper reporters and editors. They are so afraid of having their tenure challenged - and of appearing on the attack TV talk shows where any and all debate like this has been relegated - that I’m afraid it won’t happen.
Just look what happened to the Colorado professor recently who stood up to them. There is one professor in Texas who occasionally crawls out of his protected hole to appear on Hardball on MSNBC, where he is relegated to the weird liberal professor category so fast it is excruciating to watch.
We are in deep shit in this country and I don’t see any way out of it in the near future. Defending freedom and democracy takes courage - and not just by poor Army grunts who head on over to do their duty in Iraq in spite of the fact that it is a corrupt war.
Just look what happened in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Perhaps the intelligentsia there - writers, artists, professors - were so desperate that revolution became the only option. No one here is that desperate yet. They have reached a certain level of comfort - and will do what it takes to protect their families, which means they do not have the will to stand on the wall and fight. They will hide and hope the Democratic Party comes to their aid.
If these trends continue, we may very well reach the point where the educated millions in this country will finally stand up to the corporate bastards and the demagogues who would turn this land into a Christian Army. But it won’t happen today or tomorrow. It will take a bona fide crisis to make people stand up.
Maybe when the economy crashes like Argentina and they see their retirement nest eggs slip away they will be hungry enough to try to save this experiment in democracy. Until that day, the story line will remain the same. Liberal verses conservative, evolution verses creation, and more and more feature stories in the newspapers and on TV about church.
Everyone wants to be on the right side if it turns out to be true that “the end of the world is near.” I am here to tell you that these people wouldn’t recognize Jesus if he did come back to earth. They would classify him a terrorist and lock him up at Guantanamo and throw the Bible in a toilet.
Newsweek was right. They just didn’t spend the time and money to nail it down. But now the Washington Post company is as down for the count as the New York Times. Is there a news organization left in the U.S. that will do the necessary reporting to help us out of this mess?
I’m not aware of one but I would be more than happy to jump in myself and help. I have no tenure, no trust fund, no health insurance, no retirement plan. In short, I have nothing to lose. Now if I could only find the right benefactor to put some real money behind this Web site . . .
May 20th, 2005 at 1:04 pm
You ARE doing the right thing, Fast2write!
This blog is one of the best designed, informative, and well-maintained out there. Like all good things, it needs a larger audience.
The fact that Newsweek caved is appalling. As bad a Rather getting fired for calling Bush a draft-dodger (duh). Somebody has to stand up and point out the lack of clothes the emperor is wearing before it’s too late…