Thursday, April 26, 2007

Bill Moyers is back on TV

You probably remember Bill Moyers, who got the bum's rush from PBS after Bush crony Ken Tomlinson was installed as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I don't know where Tomlinson is these days (does he still have that cushy job running Voice of America?), but Moyers is back! He has just launched a new show, called Bill Moyers Journal [sic -- no apostrophe].

The first episode, "Buying the War," is a documentary largely concentrating on the packaging of George and Dick's excellent adventure in Iraq, and focuses especially on the compliance of the mainstream media. Here's Moyers's own pitch for the show:

What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President -- no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored. How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?

The show starts a little slowly, and if you've been getting your news from anywhere other than Fox over the past few years, it'll probably seem like old hat. Nice effort to document it all, I thought initially, but really, nothing too groundbreaking. After a few minutes, though, the show starts getting into a level of detail beyond what I had known.

You'll have to put up with the insufferable pontifications of Dan Rather from time to time, and nauseating archived clips of Bush, et al, doing their "let's do war!" soundbites, but other than that, it's quite good. Moyers makes Tim Russert and Peter Beinart spill a little flop sweat, and spotlights some of the few reporters who did get the story right, long, long ago. There's a surprising amount of evidence presented of suppression of reporters' findings by their bosses. All in all, it's well worth watching, although I suspect that no one who should watch it will.

The show aired last night (I missed that), and hopefully, will be re-run at some point in the future. In the meantime, you can watch it online and/or read the transcript.

On that same page, you'll see the announcement that Moyers's show will air regularly on Friday nights, starting tomorrow, 27 April. According to the show's blog, Jon Stewart will be the first guest, and he and Moyers will discuss "how faking the news can reveal more of the truth than all of the Sunday-morning talk shows put together."

Welcome back, Bill.

Hat tip for the link: Joel Achenbach.


Update

2007-04-27 00:15 EDT

Here's a nice excerpt from the show's blog, a reprint of an interview that Moyers gave to The Christian Century:

Q: If the Bush administration were to ask you for your advice, what would you say to them?

A: Well, I did give President Bush advice once: on a broadcast I urged him to make Al Gore head of homeland security -- in other words, turn our response to the terrorist attacks into a bipartisan effort, make the fight against terro[r]ism an American cause, not a partisan battle cry.

What would I say now? Fire the ideologues and assign them to scrub the floors at Guantánamo for penitence. Stop confusing neocon pundits with Old Testament prophets. Read the Bible for humility's sake, but for policy's sake commit to memory the report of the Iraq Study Group. Don't sacrifice any more soldiers to prove you're in charge; get the soldiers out of the line of fire between Sunnis and Shi'ites. And remind your hirelings of Winston Churchill's definition of democracy as the occasional necessity of deferring to the opinions of other people.

The whole interview is really good. Strictly speaking, it appears to be less of a real-time interview than Moyers's written answers to a set of submitted questions, but that doesn't detract from their worth.

2 comments:

Zo Kwe Zo said...

For how I feel about real-time interviews, see Public Radio Gone Astray. I'm glad that Bill Moyers' and our time is not wasted while he tries to compose an intelligent and well-thought-out answer in real time.

Speaking of the apostrophe in Bill Moyers' name:

He has just launched a new show, called Bill Moyers Journal [sic -- no apostrophe].

I suppose you want to say the McNeill-Lehrer's News Hour too? Or maybe The Saturday Evening's Post? I personally reserve the apostrophe to indicate a more intimate relationship/ownership. Bill Moyers' Journal is probably sitting in his desk drawer, and I don't imagine he'd want me leafing through it.

bjkeefe said...

You make a semi-persuasive case for no apostrophe at all, Dan. If the show had been called The Bill Moyers Journal, I'd plead nolo.

Since they went with a show title that sounds a little more personal, by omitting the "the," I continue to think that Moyers (or his team) picked the no-apostrophe formulation because his last name ends in S, and he/they either couldn't bear to see the show title misspelled all the time, or liked the thought of it being misspelled on the wingnut blogs.


We agree on the interview aspect -- as I said in the original post, I thought Moyers's answers were worth reading, and I think it's perfectly legitimate to email someone a list of questions, receive the answers, and cut and paste the result. I just wish that we had a different word for what was presented. To me, part of what makes an interview an interview is the idea that someone has to present his or her thinking in real time. I'm not saying I crave "gotcha" journalism, but it's often instructive to see how people can think on their feet.

As for Public Radio Gone Astray, I'd forgotten that we'd had a somewhat similar discussion about interviews in the past. Thanks for the reminder.

You'll have noted that I've made no comment on our differing taste in rendering the possessive. Your Moyers' is what I was tempted to write, since that's probably how I'd say it, unlike Hans's kitchen, say. Put me down for a slavish devotion to Elements of Style, not to mention a foolish consistency.

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