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In Praise of Reporting Reality—And The Truth

By Bill Moyers

Ron Ridenhour, who brought the My Lai massacre to the light of day, was courageous. To get the story out, he had to defy the whole might and power of the United States government, including its war machine. Back then, in 1969, I was publisher of Newsday, having left the White House some two years earlier. Our editor Bill McIlwain played… return to article

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    Great.  TV has made real journalism more and more difficult.  The Bush administration has put foxes in virtually all the henhouses.  Their attempt at PBS almost succeeded, but it did weaken PBS.  Where you can tell the truth, even if you know it, seems to be getting more limited.

    United States Posted by oxheadone on Apr 10, 2008 at 12:19 AM

    The problem is that now news divisions are regarded as little more than revenue sources for their parent conglomerates. That means they focus on market share (i.e. ratings), therefore faddish viewing habits, therefore what “interests” the public in the momentary short term whether or not it’s truly in the public interest. So, for example, celebrity foibles get more airtime than substantive analysis of economic and foreign policy issues.

    I guess the old-fashioned view that the role of the journalist (print or broadcast) is to inform, just to devotedly inform as an essential pillar of democratic republicanism, is outmoded. Now it’s about responding to the “choices” of the viewing public.

    Here’s a case in point: check out as best you can the difference between CNN’s domestic broadcast menu compared to CNN International. You’ll be struck by just how little “hard news” gets the camera as a function of the whole in the domestic version. We expat viewers get tons more “hard” reports, even with their own flaws.

    We didn’t get 3 straight days of obsessive focus on the saga of Anna Nicole Smith’s demise and its aftermath, for instance. What we did get was too much, but it was a fraction of what y’all had to imbibe. Every time I go back to visit, I’m amazed at the proliferation of celebrity reporter shows.

    Give me the approach of Charles Lewis over at the Center for Public Integrity. Just dig for the facts, just read the news.

    As always, it has to be asked, what agenda is being served?

    Rhetorical question.

    Philippines Posted by Kuya on Apr 10, 2008 at 12:46 AM

    Moyers is Right, Power will only foot the bill for publicity, Never for actual news, unless there is a greater power forcing its hand. The American People are the only power that can do so, but only if they are awake and aware.

    Answering the alarm bells of the past 8 years (and more) is just the first step, there is a whole lot of work to do and not much time to change course, and most folks haven’t learned to read a compass yet.

    United States Posted by FreeDem on Apr 10, 2008 at 1:59 AM

    I stand and applaud, Mr. Moyers, once again and as usual. Your exhortations and exposition enlighten; our courage, candor and conscience contradict careerism. Those of us whose experience in mainstream journalism confirms and verifies what you posit, remain hopeful that professors of journalism concur, that applicants to schools of journalism are not screened politically, and, most of all, that journalism’s doors might remain open to those not molded by conformity’s deformations, academically or otherwise. Politics is ever and always who gets what, why, when and how. Journalism should, as you steadfastly remind, disallow its tendency disgrace the process.

    United States Posted by Bud Wizer on Apr 10, 2008 at 1:32 PM

    That’s some nervy title, Bill.

    I’m afraid if one is interested in “reality”, or “truth”, one shouldn’t look to Moyers for a role model.  Moyers is little more than a left-wing hack, dressed up as a folksy sweater-wearing “journalist”. 

    They’ll seldom be a left of center scandal - and there’s plenty - that Moyers will highlight with enthusiasm, if he covers it at all.  He saves his energy for anything and everything he can dig up on the right.  Right wing Christians are an especially beloved target of Moyers’ selective wrath.

    Moyers had little regard for reality or truth a while back when he smeared and belittled a perfectly decent former government servant.  He wrongly and carelessly attributed a defaming quote to him that he never made, and broadly and inaccurately demonized millions of similarly decent Christians.

    And of course the Iraq war is uniformly awful and wrong in Moyers’ book, no question, as he tosses grenades at the effort from the safety of his comfy computer chair. Somehow I doubt he’d ever muster the courage, much less the interest, to actually go there, lest that might just force him to confront the situation as it really, truthfully is, and realize that the days of My Lai are for him, sadly over:

    From the Publisher

    Michael Yon changed my mind about the war in Iraq, by making me understand it for the first time.

    From the very beginning I was against the war. I thought it would be a disaster, another Vietnam. And until I had the privilege of working on this book with Michael I was always for immediate pull-out…..

    ......Michael—who is as close to totally non-political as anyone I know—showed me two things. First, because I judged by Vietnam, the war of my youth, I had radically underestimated what American soldiers could do. I knew they could blow away any regular opponent on any battlefield. But wage a counterinsurgency against an enemy with broad support in the population? Win the “hearts and minds,” to use the Vietnam era phrase that now can be used only ironically? That was asking too much, I thought.

    I was 100 percent wrong. Today’s American soldiers excel at counterinsurgency, because they excel at the most important thing: winning over the people by inspiring them with their own courage and compassion, discipline and determination….

    .....Just wait until you read the Chapter “High Noon” (my favorite), the story of the American soldiers who have to arrest a corrupt but politically popular Iraqi police chief we had put in office in the first place because he had been a real hero in fighting the terrorists. He had to be removed by Americans to show the Iraqis we really did believe in the rule of law. The whole thing could have blown up into a one-town civil war with hundreds dead on both sides. Won’t tell you how it ends, but you will be amazed and very proud….

    .....I am convinced that everything I once thought about the war was wrong. The truth is we are doing a great thing in Iraq, most of the Iraqi people really do want to be a united democratic nation and already consider America their greatest friend and ally. It would be a crime to turn tail now and abandon them now.

    I owe all that to Michael’s book, which is why I believe publishing Moment of Truth in Iraq may be the best thing I have ever done for my country.

    But the overall irony is that Moyers seriously wants us to believe that all those mere mortal journalists out there are somehow toeing some strict corporate, right-wing Republican line. But looking back on the media’s inordinate focus on all the bad from right-wing quarters, and on the good from the left-wing, one becomes a little suspicious as to the accuracy of someone of Moyer’s demonstrably often unfair, unbalanced, unreal and untrue obsessions.

    United States Posted by Natalie on Apr 16, 2008 at 9:53 AM

    Sadly, you have sold yourself on the idea that Bill Moyers is a weak, Jesus-hating , liberal journalist.  Truth may be relative to some degree, but your truth is definitely relative to your short-sighted view of the world.

    If you want to attack Bill Moyers on the Iraq war issue, explain why we went there in the first place when Osama Bin Laden was in Afghanistan.

    Explain why we wasted efforts on Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with Al Queda or 9/11 when we had Bin Laden in our grasp.

    Explain why the administration starting talking about war in Iraq on the day after 9/11 when it was Al Queda that attacked us.

    Explain why we went in to Iraq with absolutely NO strategy for withdrawal afterwards.

    Explain why the administration sent college kids over there to lead the rebuilding effort.

    Explain why we paid Haliburton more than our troops that fought and died.

    Explain why WE STILL CAN’T GET OUT and why it is that conservatives seem eager to keep our troops there forever regardless of how many lives (both American and Iraqi) are lost in this endless, purposeless war. 

    What was our goal? What is it now? Will it ever be attained? Even our soldiers are at a loss to answer those questions. 

    Explain to me how breaking our military is making this country stronger and how keeping our troops in Iraq for years on end is supporting them.

    Jingoistic “truths” don’t jibe with reality.

    United States Posted by Kansasliberal on Apr 26, 2008 at 7:31 PM

    Bush attacked (assuming that it would be a ‘slam-dunk’)Iraq to demonstrate that he was a better man than his father, to secure Iraqi oil for US companies, and to reassure his reelection in 2004.  Of these reasons, only the last has worked out.  Iraq is exporting less oil than it did before and will continue to be unstable, and unreconstructable, until we leave.  Bush cannot leave Iraq because he has to be able to pin the loss on the democrats and McCain will do likewise (just as Nixon did with Vietnam).  There is no defense for the US attacking its major ally against Iran, particularly since we were holding Iraq by the scruf of the neck since Kuwait.  Saddam was no worse than the Saudi regime and he was denounced by Bin Laden as an infedele.  Iraq was the only successful secular arab country and we have now turned it over to religious nuts of various kinds to fight over.  Our brave soldiers are engaged in protecting themselves from millions of surrounding Iraqs who hate them.

    United States Posted by oxheadone on Apr 27, 2008 at 1:38 AM
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