{"id":959,"date":"2004-12-24T01:49:24","date_gmt":"2004-12-24T09:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2004\/12\/departing_words\/"},"modified":"2004-12-24T01:49:24","modified_gmt":"2004-12-24T09:49:24","slug":"departing_words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2004\/12\/departing_words.html","title":{"rendered":"DEPARTING WORDS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I should have said, “Back in ’05, if not sooner.” Sooner because I wanted to link to the video of
\nall 50-plus minutes of Bill Moyers’s keynote speech to the National Conference on Media Reform.
\nIt was posted on the Web this morning<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>
\nby Democracy Now!, the best daily TV-radio-Internet news broadcast we’ve got.
\n

<\/P>
\n

A video of roughly half the speech, which Moyers gave a year ago (Nov. 18, 2003), was posted last
\nspring<\/B><\/STRONG><\/FONT><\/A> by Democracy Now!, but it’s worth hearing every last
\nword of what he had to say. You can also read the transcript<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>. (It includes policy recommendations he
\ndecided to skip in his speech.) If you prefer a summary, here’s mine<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>.<\/P>
\n

Moyers’s eloquence was tasty stuff:<\/P>
\n


\n

In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom
\nwith the blunt instruments of the law: padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors
\nand writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and the Constitution
\nstruck those weapons out of their hands. But they’ve found new ones now, in the name of
\n“national security.” …
\n

<\/P>
\n

Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in
\nkeeping information from the people at large and — in defiance of the Constitution — from their
\nrepresentatives in Congress. Never has so powerful a media oligopoly — the word is Barry
\nDiller’s, not mine — been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power.
\nNever have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow
\ncontempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people’s need to
\nknow.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

One other thing. When Moyers retired from broadcast journalism, appearing eight days ago
\nfor the last time on his weekly PBS program “Now,” he said it would continue with David
\nBrancaccio as host. And it will. But “without Moyers’s influence at PBS,” I was concerned<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> that “you have
\nto wonder how long the show will last.” Well, the signs are already lousy. “Now” will be cut
\ndown from 60 minutes to 30 minutes, Amy Goodman reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I should have said, “Back in ’05, if not sooner.” Sooner because I wanted to link to the video of all 50-plus minutes of Bill Moyers’s keynote speech to the National Conference on Media Reform. It was posted on the Web this morning by Democracy Now!, the best daily TV-radio-Internet news broadcast we’ve got. A […]<\/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-959","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-ft","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","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=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}