Without a “strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony,” Moyers tells
\nus, “it is left to journalism to be democracy’s best friend.” Which is why the bid by Federal
\nCommunications Commission chief Michael Powell “to permit further concentration of media
\nownership” — and which has been “blessed by the White House” — is so dangerous. “If free and
\nindependent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the
\noxygen goes out of democracy. And there is no surer way to intimidate and then silence
\nmainstream journalists than to be their boss.” It’s not just Murdoch or the Journal’s editorial
\npage and their ilk who are to blame. It’s so-called liberals, too:<\/P>
\n
And then there’s Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS. In the very week that
\nthe once-Tiffany Network was celebrating its 75th anniversary — and taking kudos for its glory
\ndays when it was unafraid to broadcast “The Harvest of Shame” and “The Selling of the
\nPentagon” — the network’s famous eye blinked. Pressured by a vociferous and relentless
\nright-wing campaign and bullied by the Republican National Committee — and at a time when its
\nparent company has billions resting on whether the White House, Congress, and the FCC will
\nallow it to own even more stations than currently permissible — CBS caved in and pulled the
\nminiseries about Ronald Reagan that conservatives thought insufficiently worshipful. … Granted,
\nmade-for-television movies about living figures are about as vital as the wax figures at Madame
\nTussaud’s — and even less authentic — granted that the canonizers of Ronald Reagan hadn’t even
\nseen the film before they set to howling; granted, on the surface it’s a silly tempest in a teapot;
\nstill, when a once-great network falls obsequiously to the ground at the feet of a partisan mob
\nover a cheesy mini-series that practically no one would have taken seriously as history, you have
\nto wonder if the slight tremor that just ran through the First Amendment could be the harbinger of
\ngreater earthquakes to come, when the stakes are really high. And you have to wonder what
\nconcessions the media tycoons-cum-supplicants are making when no one is
\nlooking.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\nMoyers’s remarks touch on the dangers of a megamogul such as Italy’s “richest citizen,” who
\njust happens to be its prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi; who just happens to control directly or
\nindirectly Italy’s “state television networks and radio stations, three of its four commercial
\ntelevision networks, two big publishing houses, two national newspapers, 50 magazines, the
\ncountry’s largest movie production-and-distribution company, and a chunk of its Internet
\nservices.” <\/P>
\n
Citing Jane Kramer’s New Yorker piece about the prime minister, Moyers notes that one
\ncritic says “half the reporters in Italy work for Berlusconi, and the other half think they might have
\nto. Small wonder he has managed to put the Italian state to work to guarantee his fortune — or
\nthat his name is commonly attached to such unpleasant things as contempt for the law, conflict of
\ninterest, bribery, and money laundering.” Nonetheless, “his power over what other Italians see,
\nread, buy, and, above all, think, is overwhelming.” And who is “Berlusconi’s close friend?” he
\nasks. None other than Rupert Murdoch. Last July “programming on nearly all the satellite
\nhookups in Italy was switched automatically to Murdoch’s Sky Italia,” according to Kramer. What
\na surprise. <\/P>
\n
Moyers offers anecdotal tales about the first American newspaper editor, Benjamin Harris,
\nwhose Boston paper, not incidentally, was shut down by the Massachusetts government in 1690,
\nand the printer Peter Zenger printer who was jailed 40 years later in New York “for criticizing its
\nroyal governor,” but who was found innocent by a jury. It was swayed in large measure
\nby the defense lawyer’s summation, which declared that Zenger’s case was:<\/P>
\n
\nNot the cause of the poor Printer, nor of New York alone, [but] the cause of
\nLiberty, and … every Man who prefers Freedom to a Life of Slavery will bless and honour You, as
\nMen who … by an impartial and uncorrupt Verdict, [will] have laid a Noble Foundation for
\nsecuring to ourselves, our Posterity and our Neighbors, That, to which Nature and the Laws of
\nour Country have given us a Right, the Liberty — both of exposing and opposing arbitrary Power
\n— by speaking and writing — Truth.<\/I><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n<\/P>
\n
Moyers, let’s remember, is no wild radical. He’s a mainstream liberal with long
\nexperience both in government and in journalism.<\/P>
\n
I am older than almost all of you and am not likely to be around for the
\nduration; I have said for several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn 70
\nnext year. But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter Zenger, Thomas
\nPaine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who
\nfaced odds no less than ours and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It’s your fight
\nnow. Look around. You are not alone.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\nLet’s hope he’s right and wasn’t ending on a cheerful note just because he was addressing
\nlike-minded journalists. His keynote speech was, in fact, a severe storm warning. It’s
\nMoyers’ warning more than the happy-face assurance of his concluding
\nremarks that must be taken seriously.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-bJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}