Bill Moyers Speech on PBS Censorship

[JPZenger]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/17/moyers/print.html

Excerpts of Bill Moyers' recent speech last week in St. Louis.

He noted that he aroused the anger of the right for saying that: "The flag belongs to the country, not to the government. And it reminds me that it's not un-American to think that war -- except in self-defense -- is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve, and diplomacy." Moyers said he also caused anger for "our continuing reporting on overpricing at Haliburton, chicanery on K Street, and the heavy, if divinely guided, hand of Tom DeLay."

Moyers then said: "When Senator Lott protested that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) "has not seemed willing to deal with Bill Moyers," a new member of the board, a Republican fundraiser named Cheryl Halperin, who had been appointed by President Bush, agreed that CPB needed more power to do just that sort of thing. She left no doubt about the kind of penalty she would like to see imposed on malefactors like Moyers."

"...I always knew Nixon would be back. I just didn't know this time he would be the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Buchanan and Nixon succeeded in cutting CPB funding for all public affairs programming except for Black Journal. They knocked out multiyear funding for the National Public Affairs Center for Television... And they voted to take away from the PBS staff the ultimate responsibility for the production of programming."

"I simply never imagined that any CPB chairman, Democrat or Republican, would cross the line from resisting White House pressure to carrying it out for the White House. But that's what Kenneth Tomlinson has done...The New York Times also reported that "on the recommendation of administration officials" Tomlinson hired a White House flack (I know the genre) named Mary Catherine Andrews as a senior CPB staff member. While she was still reporting to Karl Rove at the White House, Andrews set up CPB's new ombudsman's office..."

[tyedyeto]

1. Excellent speech...

watched it last night on FSTV.

Bill Moyers: :yourock:

[struggle4progress]

2. kick

[question everything]

3. Another kick

[Eloriel]

4. Wow. Very discouraging, tho simply validation of what we all

pretty much alredy knew.