Bill Moyers: Muting The Conversation Of Democracy

May 17, 2005

Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host the PBS program NOW With Bill Moyers. Moyers also serves as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, which gives financial support to TomPaine.com.

The following is an excerpt of the closing address Moyers delivered at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, Mo., on May 15, 2005. Click here for video and audio of the speech.

The fight to preserve the Web from corporate gatekeepers joins media reformers, producers and educators—and it’s a fight that has only just begun.

I want to tell you about another fight we’re in today. The story I’ve come to share with you goes to the core of our belief that the quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined. I can tell this story because I’ve been living it. It’s been in the news this week, including reports of more attacks on a single journalist—yours truly—by the right-wing media and their allies at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

As some of you know, CPB was established almost 40 years ago to set broad policy for public broadcasting and to be a firewall between political influence and program content. What some on this board are now doing today, led by its chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, is too important, too disturbing and yes, even too dangerous for a gathering like this not to address.