NYT: Moyers Leaves a Public Affairs Pulpit With Sermons to Spare

[DeepModem Mom]

Moyers Leaves a Public Affairs Pulpit With Sermons to Spare
By DAVID CARR

Published: December 17, 2004


Bill Moyers, a preacher turned journalist who accrued 30 Emmys, has veered back to the pulpit in announcing his retirement from "Now With Bill Moyers," a PBS weekly newsmagazine for which he has been the host for three years. His final broadcast tonight marks a 33-year run on public television that has brought awards, attacks and almost uncountable stories.

The gospel of Mr. Moyers - an unreconstructed progressive - warns against the danger of media consolidation, the growing links between conservative government and conservative media and the threat of information control by government.

Anybody who has paid attention to Mr. Moyers's 54-year career in journalism would not be surprised by his jeremiad. He is a rigorous journalist, one whose documentaries and television news reports always point to the facts, but when he makes up his mind, he lands hard on his conclusions. And among other epiphanies, Mr. Moyers has decided that the current administration in the White House represents a threat to free and unfettered discourse.

"The first thing that President Bush did when he came into office was to try and deny access to his father's presidential papers," Mr. Moyers, 70, said in a telephone interview earlier this week from his Manhattan office. "The attacks of 9/11 have given them a cover and a rationale to accelerate what has been an ambitious plan to keep the workings of government secret. They make Lyndon Johnson seem like a piker."... (Moyers served as Johnson's special assistant and press secretary.)


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/arts/television/17moye.html

[anitar1]

1. Moyers

The one and only imho

[OneBlueSky]

2. Moyers should be drafted as spokesperson for . . .

a New Progressive Majority . . . only journalist telling the truth these days, and we need his pespective on things . . .

[Brundle_Fly]

3. he will be

missed. :(

[Hekate]

4. Bill Moyers is a national treasure

> FrontPageMagazine.com, a conservative Web site, published a detailed
> retrospective earlier this month on Mr. Moyers, describing him as a
> "sweater-wearing pundit who delivered socialist and neo-Marxist
> propaganda with a soft Texas accent."
>
> And Mr. Moyers has done nothing to endear himself further as he heads
> for the exit, telling anyone who will listen that "the conservative
> press is a propaganda wing of the current administration and the
> mainstream press thinks only of the bottom line."

So the neocons think of Bill Moyers as a kind of commie in a Mr. Rogers outfit! Very funny, when you think of it. The early Christians believed in sharing everything communally, caring for "the least of these," remembering those who are in prison, treating others as you would want to be, and not bothering to amass wealth in this life, but giving it all away.

It seems to me that all along the way what Moyers has done is act consistently with the religious impulse that guided him to become a Baptist minister -- that is, the Christianity based more on the Beatitudes than on the "smiting the unworthy" parts of the Bible that seem so attractive to members of the 700 Club.

May Bill and his wife be richly blessed by their God. He will be greatly missed.

Hekate

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Amen to that, Hekate!

[athena]

6. Didn't you all think this article was a little unbalanced?

They devoted a lot more space to his critics' opinions of him than his admirers'. An article in a journal like the NYT about someone like Bill Moyers should be a little more respectful.

Here is what The Nation had to say:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041227&s=editors2

I will truly miss Bill Moyers. He provided a much-needed service, as the only journalist on TV who knew what journalism really means. I only wish I had started watching his program earlier.

[SouthernDaisy]

7. Indeed!

To hell with David Carr and this article; he wrote:

"To many people with allegiances to liberal causes, he has been a kind of patron saint, a journalist-activist who never let notions of objectivity get in the way of taking a stand."

Bill Moyers, in my opinion, is a saint!

[proud patriot]

8. I cried durring his closing statements last night

My whole life Moyers was right there for me to
learn from . I will miss him an awful lot :cry: