ON TRUTH AND JOURNALISM

We all need something to get us out of bed. Here's what gets me up in the morning: Bill Moyers on truth and journalism. If you've got a few minutes -- OK, 30 minutes -- have a look at him speaking recently at the National Conference on Media Reform in Madison, Wisc. Moyer's keynote address is powerful and eloquent and delivers the sort of wisdom you may encounter in private but rarely in public discourse. (Click on the link above and then click on "Watch 256k stream.")

Moyers defines three forces that shape the information the public needs to know and how it is (or isn't) communicated: 1) the age-old "reluctance of government -- even democratically elected government -- to operate in the sunshine"; 2) the more recent "tendency of megamedia giants to exalt commercial values over democratic values"; and 3) the emergence of "a quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world."

If you'd rather just read Moyers' remarks, here's the transcript. (Unfortunately it's riddled with typos and transcription errors, and it's missing many of his remarks.) But let me give you a taste of what he said:

In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law: padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and the Constitution struck those weapons out of their hands. But they've found new ones now, in the name of "national security." The classifier's Top Secret stamp, used indiscriminately, is as potent a silencer as a writ of arrest. And beyond what is officially labeled "secret" there hovers a culture of sealed official lips, opened only to favored media insiders: of government by leak and innuendo and spin, of misnamed "public information" offices that churn out blizzards of releases filled with self-justifying exaggerations and, occasionally, just plain damned lies. Censorship without officially appointed censors.

He points a damning finger at the thuggish gang in the White House, its corporate cronies and media goons:

Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and -- in defiance of the Constitution -- from their representatives in Congress. Never has so powerful a media oligopoly -- the word is Barry Diller's, not mine -- been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people's need to know.

And Moyers names names:

I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas today in a phenomenon unique in our history. You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right-wing conspiracy to think this collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. Stretching from the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch's empire to the nattering nabobs of know-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates -- the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents.

Without a "strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony," Moyers tells us, "it is left to journalism to be democracy's best friend." Which is why the bid by Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell "to permit further concentration of media ownership" -- and which has been "blessed by the White House" -- is so dangerous. "If free and independent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the oxygen goes out of democracy. And there is no surer way to intimidate and then silence mainstream journalists than to be their boss." It's not just Murdoch or the Journal's editorial page and their ilk who are to blame. It's so-called liberals, too:

And then there's Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS. In the very week that the once-Tiffany Network was celebrating its 75th anniversary -- and taking kudos for its glory days when it was unafraid to broadcast "The Harvest of Shame" and "The Selling of the Pentagon" -- the network's famous eye blinked. Pressured by a vociferous and relentless right-wing campaign and bullied by the Republican National Committee -- and at a time when its parent company has billions resting on whether the White House, Congress, and the FCC will allow it to own even more stations than currently permissible -- CBS caved in and pulled the miniseries about Ronald Reagan that conservatives thought insufficiently worshipful. ... Granted, made-for-television movies about living figures are about as vital as the wax figures at Madame Tussaud's -- and even less authentic -- granted that the canonizers of Ronald Reagan hadn't even seen the film before they set to howling; granted, on the surface it's a silly tempest in a teapot; still, when a once-great network falls obsequiously to the ground at the feet of a partisan mob over a cheesy mini-series that practically no one would have taken seriously as history, you have to wonder if the slight tremor that just ran through the First Amendment could be the harbinger of greater earthquakes to come, when the stakes are really high. And you have to wonder what concessions the media tycoons-cum-supplicants are making when no one is looking.

Moyers's remarks touch on the dangers of a megamogul such as Italy's "richest citizen," who just happens to be its prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi; who just happens to control directly or indirectly Italy's "state television networks and radio stations, three of its four commercial television networks, two big publishing houses, two national newspapers, 50 magazines, the country's largest movie production-and-distribution company, and a chunk of its Internet services."

Citing Jane Kramer's New Yorker piece about the prime minister, Moyers notes that one critic says "half the reporters in Italy work for Berlusconi, and the other half think they might have to. Small wonder he has managed to put the Italian state to work to guarantee his fortune -- or that his name is commonly attached to such unpleasant things as contempt for the law, conflict of interest, bribery, and money laundering." Nonetheless, "his power over what other Italians see, read, buy, and, above all, think, is overwhelming." And who is "Berlusconi's close friend?" he asks. None other than Rupert Murdoch. Last July "programming on nearly all the satellite hookups in Italy was switched automatically to Murdoch's Sky Italia," according to Kramer. What a surprise.

Moyers offers anecdotal tales about the first American newspaper editor, Benjamin Harris, whose Boston paper, not incidentally, was shut down by the Massachusetts government in 1690, and the printer Peter Zenger printer who was jailed 40 years later in New York "for criticizing its royal governor," but who was found innocent by a jury. It was swayed in large measure by the defense lawyer's summation, which declared that Zenger's case was:

Not the cause of the poor Printer, nor of New York alone, [but] the cause of Liberty, and ... every Man who prefers Freedom to a Life of Slavery will bless and honour You, as Men who ... by an impartial and uncorrupt Verdict, [will] have laid a Noble Foundation for securing to ourselves, our Posterity and our Neighbors, That, to which Nature and the Laws of our Country have given us a Right, the Liberty -- both of exposing and opposing arbitrary Power -- by speaking and writing -- Truth.

Moyers, let's remember, is no wild radical. He's a mainstream liberal with long experience both in government and in journalism.

I am older than almost all of you and am not likely to be around for the duration; I have said for several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn 70 next year. But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter Zenger, Thomas Paine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who faced odds no less than ours and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It's your fight now. Look around. You are not alone.

Let's hope he's right and wasn't ending on a cheerful note just because he was addressing like-minded journalists. His keynote speech was, in fact, a severe storm warning. It's Moyers' warning more than the happy-face assurance of his concluding remarks that must be taken seriously.