Moyers: "Take back public broadcasting"

If you haven't caught Bill Moyers' speech to the national Conference on Media Reform (it's running on C-SPAN 2 this week), you really owe it to yourself.

The video and audio-only feeds (for those of you with broadband connections, you lucky dogs) are here, courtesy of Democracy Now!

Choice excerpts:

I mean the people obsessed with control, using the government to threaten and intimidate. I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class in a war to make sure Ahmed Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq's oil. I mean the people who turn faith based initiatives into a slush fund and who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets. I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy.

That's who I mean. And if that's editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence.

And:

An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only on partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical. That kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy - or worse.

And:

The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican party became. That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.

And:

Only two weeks ago did we learn that [CPB chairman and Bush hit-man] Mr. Tomlinson had spent $10,000 last year to hire a contractor who would watch my show and report on political bias. That's right. Kenneth Y. Tomlinson spent $10,000 of your money to hire a guy to watch NOW to find out who my guests were and what my stories were.

Ten thousand dollars.

Gee, Ken, for $2.50 a week, you could pick up a copy of "TV Guide" on the newsstand. A subscription is even cheaper, and I would have sent you a coupon that can save you up to 62 %.

For that matter, Ken, all you had to do was watch the show yourself. You could have made it easier with a double Jim Bean, your favorite. Or you could have gone on line where the listings are posted. Hell, you could have called me -- collect -- and I would have told.

Agree with Brother Bill on the details, or disagree with him--you've gotta love his ferocious passion for keeping the system open for all of us to have our say.