Last Friday Bill Moyers discussed the appointment of Regina Benjamin for Surgeon General and contrasted her rural medical clinic with the nation's biggest and most profitable insurance companies:
Moyers' essay is a precise narrative of our country's health-care crisis. While doctors with ethics are paid with oysters and fish, the Chairman and CEO of Cigna announces the layoff of 1,100 employees and takes home $11.4 million for himself.
The insurance industry then takes the money they make from sick people and uses it to influence the desperate health-care debate in Washington D.C.
I think it will be a big victory if the small town doctor earns this influential position as "America's Doctor."
Last night Bill Moyers interviewed Mark Johnson, the co-director of a remarkable documentary about the simple but transformative power of music: Playing for Change: Peace Through Music.
MARK JOHNSON: Well I think music is the one thing that opens the door to bringing people to a place where they are all connected. It is easy to connect to the world through music, you know. Religion, politics, a lot of those things they seem to divide everybody…
Hidden cameras, one way mirrors, catching criminals in the act -- these were the original tactics of ambush reporting pioneered by 60 Minutes. A new generation of reporters and infotainment channels have redefined the ambush interview. I prefer to call the new style "bullying" because it has nothing to do with reporting, journalism, or integrity.
It's no surprise that Moyer's intelligence, composure, and wit beat Barry's obnoxious, repetitive talking points, but the highlight of the argument is when, at about 2 minutes into part 2, Moyers asks this key question: "Is Rupert Murdoch responsible to the American people?"
I say of course he is responsible. Murdoch is the major shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation. News Corporation owns many newspapers, magazines, studios and television channels around the world. And the man has been accused of violating editorial independence and destroying once respectable newspapers with his tabloid style sensationalism. That's not my idea of free press.
Bill Moyers once said "There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle.”
But I would like to hear Porter Barry's opinion, so I hope he does go on Moyer's show next week to offer his insight on the media's responsibility to the American people. I'm sure it will be fascinating.
For the last several months I've been watching Bill Moyers Journal every Friday on PBS. In the world of journalism, he is a veteran. I watch his show and feel like I've turned the dial back 40 or 50 years to a calmer, more reasonable and more respectable news media. He's definitely not a hot-head like Bill O'Reilly. He's not obnoxiously argumentative like Sean Hannity. He's not even a funny man like Jon Stewart. Bill Moyers is simply a real journalist.
Last night Keith Olbermann interviewed Bill Moyers and the main topic was the mainstream media. Moyers talked about the dangers of the corporate media simplifying the deep and profound problems we face in the US. He called it a "battle of bumper stickers." However, he felt encouraged when the voters saw through the whole gas tax holiday issue, and he feels that the internet might be the antidote to the herd of the mainstream media:
His most recent book, Moyers on Democracy, is a collection of his speeches on what is happening with our country -- the assault on our Constitution, the undermining of our electoral process, the class war inherent in the growth of economic inequality, the dangers of an imperial executive branch, and the attack on the independence of the press. "The gravediggers of democracy will not have the last word.”