Bill Moyers delivered these remarks in Washington, DC April 3 at the fifth annual Ridenhour Prize awards ceremony, sponsored by The Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation. Moyers received the Courage Prize.
Thank you very much, Sissy Farenthold, for those very generous words, spoken like one Texan to another–extravagantly. Thank you for the spirit of kinship. I could swear that I sensed our good Molly Ivins standing there beside you.
I am as surprised to be here as I am grateful. I never thought of myself as courageous, and still don’t. Ron Ridenhour 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. I was then publisher of Newsday, having left the White House some two years earlier. Our editor Bill McIlwain played the My Lai story big, as he should, much to the chagrin of the owner who couldn’t believe Americans were capable of such atrocities. Our readers couldn’t believe it either. Some of them picketed outside my office for days, their signs accusing the paper of being anti-American for publishing repugnant news about our troops. Some things never change.
A few years later, I gave the commencement at a nearby university, and when I finished the speech, a woman who had just been graduated came up to me and said, “Mr. Moyers, you’ve been in both government and journalism; that makes everything you say twice as hard to believe.” She was on to something.
After my government experience, it took me a while to get my footing back in journalism. I had to learn all over again that what is important for the journalist is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality. Over the last forty years, I would find that reality in assignment after assignment, from covering famine in Africa and war in Central America to inner-city families trapped in urban ghettos and middle-class families struggling to survive in an era of downsizing across the heartland. I also had to learn one of journalism’s basic lessons. The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.
Unless you are willing to fight and re-fight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every last detail to make certain you’ve got it right, and then take all of the slings and arrows directed at you by the powers that be–corporate and political and sometimes journalistic–there is no use even trying. You have to love it and I do. I.F. Stone once said, after years of catching the government’s lies and contradictions, “I have so much fun, I ought to be arrested.” Journalism 101.
So it wasn’t courage I counted on; it was exhilaration and good luck. When the road forked, I somehow stumbled into the right path, thanks to mentors like Eric Sevareid, Fred Friendly, Walter Cronkite and scores of producers, researchers and editors who lifted me to see further than one can see unless one is standing on the shoulders of others.
The quintessential lesson of my life came from another Texan named John Henry Faulk. He was a graduate, as am I, of the University of Texas. He served in the Merchant Marines, the American Red Cross and the U.S. Army during World War II, and came home to become a celebrated raconteur and popular national radio host whose career was shattered when right-wingers inspired by Joseph McCarthy smeared him as a communist. He lost his sponsors and was fired. But he fought back with a lawsuit that lasted five years and cost him every penny he owned. Financial help from Edward R. Murrow and a few others helped him to hang on. In the end, John Henry Faulk won, and his courage helped to end the Hollywood era of blacklisting. You should read his book, Fear on Trial, and see the movie starring George C. Scott. John Henry’s courage was contagious.
Before his death I produced a documentary about him, and during our interview he told me the story of how he and his friend, Boots Cooper, were playing in the chicken house there in central Texas when they were about twelve years old. They spotted a chicken snake in the top tier of the nest, so close it looked like a boa constrictor. As John Henry told it, “All of our frontier courage drained out of our heels. Actually, it trickled down our overall legs. And Boots and I made a new door through the hen house.” His momma came out to see what all of the fuss was about, and she said to Boots and John Henry, “Don’t you know chicken snakes are harmless? They can’t hurt you.” Rubbing his forehead and his behind at the same time, Boots said, “Yes, Mrs. Faulk, I know, but they can scare you so bad you’ll hurt yourself.”
John Henry Faulk never forgot that lesson. I’m always ashamed when I do. Temptation to co-option is the original sin of journalism, and we’re always finding fig leaves to cover it: economics, ideology, awe of authority, secrecy, the claims of empire. In the buildup to the invasion of Iraq we were reminded of what the late great reporter A.J. Liebling meant when he said the press is “the weak slat under the bed of democracy.” The slat broke after the invasion and some strange bedfellows fell to the floor: establishment journalists, neo-con polemicists, beltway pundits, right-wing warmongers flying the skull and bones of the “balanced and fair brigade,” administration flacks whose classified leaks were manufactured lies–all romping on the same mattress in the foreplay to disaster.
Five years, thousands of casualties, and hundreds of billion dollars later, most of the media co-conspirators caught in flagrante delicto are still prominent, still celebrated, and still holding forth with no more contrition than a weathercaster who made a wrong prediction as to the next day’s temperature. The biblical injunction, “Go and sin no more,” is the one we most frequently forget in the press. Collectively, we don’t seem to learn that all it takes to transform an ordinary politician and a braying ass into the modern incarnation of Zeus and the oracle of Delphi is an oath on the Bible, a flag in the lapel, and the invocation of national security.
There are, fortunately, always exceptions to whatever our latest dismal collective performance yields. America produces some world-class journalism, including coverage of the Iraq War by men and women as brave as Ernie Pyle. But I still wish we had a professional Hippocratic Oath of our own that might stir us in the night when we stray from our mission. And yes, I believe journalism has a mission.
Walter Lippman was prescient on this long before most of you were born. Lippman, who became the ultimate Washington insider–someone to whom I regularly leaked–acknowledged that while the press may be a weak reed to lean on, it is the indispensable support for freedom. He wrote, “The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis of journalism. Everywhere men and women are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly, they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. All the sharpest critics of democracy have alleged is true if there is no steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news. Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster must come to any people denied an assured access to the facts.”
So for all the blunders for which we are culpable; for all the disillusionment that has set in among journalists with every fresh report of job cuts and disappearing news space; for all the barons and buccaneers turning the press into a karaoke of power; for all the desecration visited on broadcast journalism by the corporate networks; for all the nonsense to which so many aspiring young journalists are consigned; and for all the fears about the eroding quality of the craft, I still answer emphatically when young people ask me, “Should I go into journalism today?” Sometimes it is difficult to urge them on, especially when serious questions are being asked about how loyal our society is to the reality as well as to the idea of an independent and free press. But I almost always answer, “Yes, if you have a fire in your belly, you can still make a difference.”
I remind them of how often investigative reporting has played a crucial role in making the crooked straight. I remind them how news bureaus abroad are a form of national security that can tell us what our government won’t. I remind them that as America grows more diverse, it’s essential to have reporters, editors, producers and writers who reflect these new rising voices and concerns. And I remind them that facts can still drive the argument and tug us in the direction of greater equality and a more democratic society. Journalism still matters.
But I also tell them there is something more important than journalism, and that is the truth. They aren’t necessarily one and the same because the truth is often obscured in the news. In his new novel, The Appeal, John Grisham tells us more about corporate, political and legal jihads than most newspapers or network news ever will; more about Wall Street shenanigans than all the cable business channels combined; more about Manchurian candidates than you will ever hear on the Sunday morning talk shows.
For that matter, you will learn more about who wins and who loses in the real business of politics, which is governance, from the public interest truth-tellers of Washington than you will from an established press tethered to official sources. The Government Accountability Project, POGO, the Sunlight Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Center for Responsible Politics, the National Security Archive, CREW, the Center for Public Integrity, just to name a few–and from whistleblowers of all sorts who never went to journalism school, never flashed a press pass, and never attended a gridiron dinner.
Ron Ridenhour was not a journalist when he came upon the truth of My Lai. He was in the Army. He later became a pioneering investigative reporter and–this is the irony–had trouble making a living in a calling where truth-telling can be a liability to the bottom line. Matthew Diaz and James Scurlock, whom you honored today, are truth-tellers without a license, reminding us that the most important credential of all is a conscience that cannot be purchased or silenced.
So I tell inquisitive and inquiring young people: “Journalism still makes a difference, but the truth matters more. And if you can’t get to the truth through journalism, there are other ways to go.”
To The Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation, to the Ridenhour judges and to all of you, thank you again for this moment and, above all, for the courage of your own convictions.
* * *
Bill Moyers is a journalist and president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
In the internet age, we’ll probably find that real truth telling of the future will come moreso from whomever is most willing, and perhaps less so from the people who are actually employed by a corporation in a “journalism” career. Self-publishing and quick self promotion are as quick as You-tube and the blogs—IF it’s true, and IF it’s good. Skip the editors, anyone? Wikipedia, anyone?
(Readers, though, must be even more willing to EDIT what they choose to believe.)
I would like to see some real courage from Bill Moyers by his openly recognizing the American Genocide of one hundred million American Indians. I have heard one person on his show talking about the “near genocide” of the American Indians. That comment went without challenge by Moyers. One wonders how many American Indians must suffer death to become a genocide. The Jewish Genocide was six million Jews and it qualifies. One hundred million Indians do not qualify however.
Of course we always hear the argument that most Indians died of disease brought here by the Europeans. The reality is that the Europeans knew that their presence here caused disease among the Indians yet they kept coming anyway. It became simply another tool in their war chest. It was easier to spread disease than to fight and kill Indians.
Moyers being a Baptist may in fact believe in Christian Dominion and therefore render him a participant in the ongoing quiet genocide of American Indians. Where is his outrage at the theft of One Hindred Million Dollars from Indians by the U.S. Government through Indian Trust. Where is his outrage about the attempted theft of twenty two million acres of Western Shoshone land by the U.S. Government for fifteen cents an acre. Where is his criticism of the mixing of church and state in the foundational elements of U.S. American Indian Law. They are strangely absent from a man of Moyer’s standing. Why?
Unfortunately, “temptation to co-option’ is the Achilles’ heel of the citizens of a free society. Some of its fig leaves: job security, supporting our troops, being a team player, knee-jerk patriotism, not-bothering-anybody-since-we-all-want-to-have-a-nice-day, etc…
Worthy Quotes:
…what is important for the journalist is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality.
…Collectively, we don’t seem to learn that all it takes to transform an ordinary politician and a braying ass into the modern incarnation of Zeus and the oracle of Delphi is an oath on the Bible, a flag in the lapel, and the invocation of national security.
…In the buildup to the invasion of Iraq we were reminded of what the late great reporter A.J. Liebling meant when he said the press is “the weak slat under the bed of democracy.” The slat broke after the invasion and some strange bedfellows fell to the floor: establishment journalists, neo-con polemicists, beltway pundits, right-wing warmongers flying the skull and bones of the “balanced and fair brigade,” administration flacks whose classified leaks were manufactured lies–all romping on the same mattress in the foreplay to disaster.
Five years, thousands of casualties, and hundreds of billion dollars later, most of the media co-conspirators caught in flagrante delicto are still prominent, still celebrated, and still holding forth with no more contrition than a weathercaster who made a wrong prediction as to the next day’s temperature.
We love ya, Bill.
Thanks for publishing this.
I greatly enjoyed Bill Moyers coverage of the new movie about the Iraq veteran.
I would like to suggest that Bill have a nice civil discussion with David Ray Griffin on his next show. Such a discourse might would be highly unsettling for those who have chosen to see those demanding a new 9/11 investigation as merely parrots of right-wing Alex Jones rhetoric.
It could lead to the cognitive dissonance that causes a crazy thing called learning. In short they might pick up a book on the faults of the official investigation.
As soon as that happens its all over. The defense of THE ONLY TIME BUSH TOLD THE TRUTH will crumble like the walls of Jericho! This would be an example of the media mediating, and avoiding the need for “white men to turn red by yelling”.
Maybe exclusion from the media is what CAUSES SOME OF THESE FOLKS TO TURN RED? The medium is the “red faced white man”
Journalists as truth tellers - now there’s an oxymoron for ya. Bill Moyers Journal is the closest thing we’ll get to real truth.
There is no truth in corporate news… I would not even dignify what we experience today as journalism.
Journalism is a dead art…
Or, if it ain’t dead yet, the corporations will damn sure kill it.
What about the missing emails… which journalists are working that expose’….???
Newspeak is here now…. KCT
Journalism has nothing to do with truth. If it did, we’d know a good deal more about Tibet than we do now, and a good deal more about our own human rights abuses. M ost of the journalists I’ve met have been looking for a free lunch, nothing more.
Doom N Gloom - When there are so very many atrocities to chose from, a wise man (or woman) must pick their battles well. Mr. Moyer isn’t a saint, and doesn’t pretend to be. He’s just a man, and he’s chosen a huge battle this time, one that needs as much of his attention as he can give it, being one voice of so few being heard now.
Don’t get me wrong - I have the blood of three great tribes (Cherokee, Blackfoot, and Sioux) flowing in my body, and have just as much anger in my heart over that mass slaughter as anyone. But that is in the past, and the Iraqi massacre is now.
Real journalism is rare and limited in the corporate media. Fortunately, it is growing on the internet. A good recent example is The Real News but it is in its early stages.
“But that is in the past, and the Iraqi massacre is now.”
True, but only as far as it goes…
In Fact…they are ‘of the same Massacre’. You can’t properly address ‘one of them’, alone, without recognizing the connections to ‘all the others’.
[Also, the Crime ‘we’ perpetrated against the N.A.&S.A.-’Indians’ represents the WORST of all/any-Crimes (and ‘human-nature’) in the World’s entire known/sorry-History.
‘Nothing compares’…]
In all-fairness to Bill, however…one Man can only address so-much Outrage. And, Iraq is more ‘timely’…if-related or “minor by comparison”.
If fear is infectious, then so too is courage.
Our Letters to the Editor, whether they are published or not, inform reporters and editors as to where the public’s mood lies.
Whenever we find the courage to sign our name to a letter critical of the government, it en-courages those who read our letters.
It takes courage to place an anti-war story on page one instead of page ten… and risk the wrath of your publisher and advertisers.
I hope they’re listening to Bill Moyers, and are encouraged - as I am - by his words.
A Hippocratic Oath for journalism — what a brilliant idea!
Thanks Doom n Gloom for pointing out the current and ongoing Shoshone tribe land theft. Whereas most treaties spelled out land deals the Ruby Valley treaty spelled out that the Shoshones were to keep their lands in Perpetuity. Kind of hard for the guv to accept this when this land includes the largest producing gold field in the world.
I know off topic but important in the ‘news’ of things.
“truth-tellers without a license, reminding us that the most important credential of all is a conscience that cannot be purchased or silenced.”-Moyers
In June 2005, during my first of five trips to occupied Palestine, I met and interviewed the whistle blower of Israel’s WMD Program, Mordechai Vanunu who “heard the voice of his conscience” and paid with 18 years in an Israeli jail and four more years since denied the right to leave the state or speak to foreigners-especially the media.
Two days ago Vanunu learned the restrictions against him have been renewed for the 5th year and today he learned that Norway caved on granting him asylum.
THAT FULL REPORT and more on WAWA Blog April 10, 2008.
Eileen Fleming, Civilian Journalist [with a conscience and i will NOT be silenced]and Editor of the PRO-BONO public service site WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
Producer “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”
Both D n G and curmudgeon99 are hereby acknowledged for bringing to the light of day those purposely hidden truths (and hideous realities), that deep down, are the foundation of all of the other (current day) atrocities that “we” continue to commit (because we got “away” for so long).
As most here already know, “there is no away”, and the creeping reality of hundreds of years of terrorism, theft, massive murder (that’s direct genocide, of course), and fascism elevated beyond even Hilter’s criminal enterprise.
Some Christian country, just like Gandhi said
We appear to be doing a much better job worshiping Baal, than Christ — but of course those are all personal choices, and THAT can hardly be laid at the foot of the govt fools.
POGOs truth will set one free -
Namaste
In an ideal world journalists might be lovers of philosophy and science. They would share an appreciation of diverse cultures and be schooled in all the world’s major religions. They wouldn’t need to take an oath because truth would be their way of life.
Hi Namaste, great Gandhi quote.
It strikes me hard in the gut that we have made everything into a business and are not ashamed in the least. Telling the truth is a business? Tell the “truth” people want to hear and make a fortune!
Healing the sick is no longer a calling, it’s a business. Going to war is a business too. Go figure. When NCLB finishes destroying our schools (by 2014), then educating our youth will become a (online) business too.
Why doesn’t fraud enter into this journalism debate? If someone sold you a car based upon lies, they would get into federal trouble, but if a journalist sells you a war based on lies, they get promoted?
“…but the truth matters more.” This from the same Bill Moyers who in the face of repeated corrections continues to broadcast the mendacious mistranslation that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth” and who follows the Zionist line that the Palestinian Territories are “disputed” territories, not occupied as the entire international community recognizes them to be.
Bill Moyers presents some interesting guests on NOW, but he is, at bottom, a Zionist flack.
DOOM & GLOOM: I would have responded to your posting as did WILMOOR… there are SO many travesties, they are ALL important; but how many can be tackled at once? Our common pain, the mark of persecution against so many tribes, so many innocents forges us all in a common pursuit of a higher justice, one that will not consign ONE more mortal to these atrocities always masked by religion or politics or some PR ideal, when 90% of the time, it’s more truly about resource allocation.
Today I took my grandson to the park and someone used a silver magic market to write surreptitiously on the side of a slide, “I pity the person who sees authority as truth, rather than Truth as (the) authority.” I was glad to see it, graffiti or otherwise.
Loved this line …
“Mr. Moyers, you’ve been in both government and journalism; that makes everything you say twice as hard to believe.” She was on to something.
—————–
We tend to think our problems are new. This quote must date back to at least the early 70’s. So, its a healthy reminder that our problems are not new.
This is a good thing. Americans have always had a healthy skepticism about both government and the media. Of course, you won’t see much of that in today’s media, but keep it in mind when talking to real Americans and you can always tap into it. Distrust of government and distrust of the press have both been staples of conservative politics for at least a generation now.
Remember that, and you can tap into it. Not with the trolls and the psyops folks that will post out here. But when you are talking to real Americans, remember these traditional mistrusts and you can use them to your advantage.
Read these comments and you can see (depending on your point of view) either the work of trolls who want to divert discussion away from the topic, or very good examples of why the left is so often so terrible at communicating and organizing. I’ll be nice and assume its the latter.
First, there’s comment number one. Attacking Mr. Moyers’ excellent speach because it didn’t talk about the American indians. The answer is that Mr. Moyers, unlike so many on the left, is actually an effective writer and speaker. Because of this, he knows that ‘focus’ is always required to communicate well. A speach is not just a random collection of talking points. Instead, its a vehicle to make a point, or maybe a very limited number of points. You make up your mind what you want to say, then you figure out how to effectively say it. What you don’t do is wander through every topic in the world in one speech.
Go to your typical antiwar rally and you almost always see the opposite. Typically you get every group in the world having to have a speaker on stage. And you see every cause in the world getting discussed from the stage. Usually its because there’s some idiot on the organizing committee saying ‘we’ve got to talk about the genocide of American indians’ even though it has very little to do with the topic of the day (such as actually trying to stop a war and today’s killing). The result is always your typical antiwar rally with a gadzillion different speakers making a gadzillion different points. The result is a long, boring, incomprehensible mismash that leaves even our supporters walking away from the speeches.
So, if Mr. Moyers had a focus on the points he wanted to make and effectively made them, but didn’t happen to talk about the Amrican Indians, well good for him! That’s simply being an effective communicator. I wish more would learn from him.
Then there’s the other comment calling him a zionist flack. You see this technique a lot these days. You take someone who has a long career in writing or speaking and you take one thing they’ve said or one opinion they’ve held, and then any time they try to talk on any topic they are attacked relentlessly about this. Eric Margolis, Robert Fisk and Noam Choamsky all get the same treatment.
If this is coming from people who agree with the cause, then I wish they’d stop. I have no idea why the left seems to enjoy shooting at its friends so much, but we sure do. Take a step back at the body of work from Mr. Moyers over the last forty years, and you’ve got to realize he’s on our side. So, what’s the point of attacking him over one thing you don’t like? It isn’t productive. In fact, it so counter-productive and disruptive that it makes me wonder about the reasons behind it. If this isn’t coming from our enemies who are trying to disrupt us, its so disruptive as to certainly look like that’s what’s happening.
PS… another key point in effectively communicating is to understand your audience. Both in terms of what they want to hear and what you think you need to tell them.
So, Mr. Moyers is talking to a group of largely journalists during the award ceremony for courage in journalism. Is it any surprise he talked about the state of American journalism and the need for courageous and truthful reporting? That seems to be very ‘on point’ for this audience. Whereas a long diatribe on the genocide of the American indians would have left most people in this audience wondering ‘why the @#$@# is he talking about this … is the bar still open …. I wonder if that blonde is single … oh, is this guy still on stage.’
CO MARC: Excellent commentary.
“We journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.”
Yes, and exposing those powerful people along with their psychopathic and perverted deeds takes courage.
Thank you, Bill Moyers, you deserve the Courage Award!
Bill Moyers is a great example of a good guy who came out on top and never forgot from whence he came or what was really important to him.
The key to reviving journalism is the support of local small businesses such as those who advertise in weekly tabloids typically given away for free and reserving some space for local and national news and commentary along with entertainment news and reviews.
JOurnalism was and continues to be destroyed by national and multi-national corporate advertising and businesses which buy out family owned papers and then turn them into glorified ad bulletins all mimicing whatever the associated press or the NYT news service publishes.
Gail,
Wouldn’t it have been nice for Bill to have the courage to expose the powerful people involved in the Kennedy assassination? The one he still denies was a “conspiracy” despite enough evidence to choke a landfill? Isn’t his continued silence on that whopper of a story of power and psychopathy the very reason he’s been allowed to nip at heels ever since? Keep silent on the big ones, and you can play to the left choir on PBS as much as you please. Keep the phony paradigm alive.
He knows where the third rails are and he knows how to avoid them. No real truth seekers are employable. Right now, it’s acceptable to pile coals on the head of the current administration so’s everyone will go back to sleep when the new one moves in. It’s playbook.
CO MARC — You are exactly correct, that we all need to maintain a focus, to achieve useful results.
My hope was to affirm the vision of mandated change, however that is BEST perceived. Perhaps the biblical lesson of milk prior to meat - for the baby - is appropriate.
To each to his ability to perceive and act; but I wont apologize for providing too much information, as too little is actually present.
BTW, I love Bill and completely agree with you about his transformational career and influence, especially now during our gloomiest (yet) days.
Namaste
Gotta agree with Quality Time but with the caveat, “Journalism TODAY has nothing to do with truth.” And it’s true TODAY’s journalists are just looking for a free lunch, which means not ever offending their corporate bosses. Truth is nowhere…
Was it better in the past? Perhaps just a tad. Back then maybe they wouldn’t be so prone to doctoring photos a la CNN and Tibet. And they wouldn’t make such hilarious mistakes as in the following link, again CNN:
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=7337546&ch=4226713&src=news
Listen carefully to the woman reporter and take a close look at the flags she’s referring to…
TODAY’s journalism courtesy of CNN…
(1.3 billion Chinese are rolling on the floor and laughing so hard they might just be willing to forgive CNN their original sin…)
Wilmoor wrote: “Doom N Gloom - When there are so very many atrocities to chose from, a wise man (or woman) must pick their battles well. Don’t get me wrong - I have the blood of three great tribes (Cherokee, Blackfoot, and Sioux) flowing in my body, and have just as much anger in my heart over that mass slaughter as anyone. But that is in the past, and the Iraqi massacre is now.”
Wilmoor, I see the Iraq War as a modern application of the same belief system that caused the American Indian Genocide, Christian dominion licensing economic aggression by military means. I do not believe that this concept can be properly addressed in the absence of the American Genocide, the worst Genocide in the last five hundred years. In addition the Indian Genocide never stopped but continues to this very day as a quiet genocide. So it is not an issue of the past, it is an issue of the present. Additionally because something happened in the past does not render it irrelevant. If that were so the Constitution could be classified as old and therefore irrelevant.
Namaste wrote: “As most here already know, “there is no away”, and the creeping reality of hundreds of years of terrorism, theft, massive murder (that’s direct genocide, of course), and fascism elevated beyond even Hilter’s criminal enterprise.”
I see it that way too Namaste. Failure to address the root of the problem of American Indian Genocide enables the same belief system to be exercised repeatedly to the detriment of other peoples and nations.
Siouxrose wrote: “Our common pain, the mark of persecution against so many tribes, so many innocents forges us all in a common pursuit of a higher justice, one that will not consign ONE more mortal to these atrocities always masked by religion or politics or some PR ideal, when 90% of the time, it’s more truly about resource allocation.”
By believing in the oneness of all things I couldn’t agree with you more. I do not bring up the American Indian Genocide out of victimization but instead because it represents the clearest and most dramatic example of the evils of Christian dominion that continue to plague our society today. Christians including Moyers fail to address the devastating consequences of Christian dominion in any serious way. That is why I have trouble accepting Moyer’s selective presentations, they fail to address the fundamental root historical causes of Christian dominion and it’s continuing negative aftermath.
COMarc wrote:
“Go to your typical antiwar rally and you almost always see the opposite. Typically you get every group in the world having to have a speaker on stage. And you see every cause in the world getting discussed from the stage. Usually its because there’s some idiot on the organizing committee saying ‘we’ve got to talk about the genocide of American indians’ even though it has very little to do with the topic of the day (such as actually trying to stop a war and today’s killing).”
COMarc, I disagree with you totally. The war today is directly connected to the same belief system that enabled the American Indian Genocide. Christian dominion and Manifest Destiny are anything but Christian or manifest, in fact, they are part of the enabling of economic and military aggression. Dominion enables Imperialism and Empire, religious, economic, and military. Nothing is more clear or convincing of the false beliefs in Christian Dominion than the American Indian Genocide, and nothing is more effective in ending it.
Curmudgeon99 and MeAlsoToo, I agree with you both and perhaps someday others will arrive at these understandings as well.
D n G — Your words are powerful, and I certainly detected not one iota of victim neediness, which is so refreshingly clear and on message.
The neo’s own neediness is so emotionally charged, as to be a powder keg await ignition, which surely also drives their unquenchable desire to control and make victims of all ELSE. It is so sad, how pathetic they really are, to manipulate power so crazily over so many.
They just like “_n_e_e_d_” to be institutionalized, to protect the Universe.
Namaste
As a mainstream journalist Moyers is unfortunately in a class by himself.
I’ve never seen him, as a reporter, try to commit lies or, more importantly, omit facts in the name of bolstering his political loyalties or personal opinions.
And when as a commentator he gives his personal opinions they are almost entirely about how our culture’s religious and political values increasingly fail to square with our actions.
In this sense, Moyers is a Socrates-like figure in US journalism; andto be honrored for it and seen as a model of betterment.
But as our society collapses under the weight of its official lies, the corrupted profession of truth telling -journalism - especially hates an highly honorable holdout like Moyers.
In an attempt to bind their psychic anxiety at being rotters to the persuit of truth, the rest of America’s mainstream Fourth Estate of course must honor Moyers.
Only fatuous conscience causes this Moyers honoring. Underneath, it is just another cynical attempt by the corporate media to gain credibility with the public in hopes beling able to tell ever more lies, mostly of omission — but with legitimacy episodically renewed by the fatuous honoring of honest journalism.
COMarc,
I second SIOUXROSE and NAMASTE on your comments. Bill Moyers IS on our side and an asset to the progressive movement.
WHOLENESS SEEKER,
Very good comments.
Bill, it is solidly my belief that the root cause in the decline of “truth,” as “presented” by too many journalists, is the profit motive impressed on journalistic writing, due to the need to yield to ownership demands. Supporting the business demand of PROFIT being more important than PRODUCT, is our recent history of mergers and buyouts, all approved by our government monitors, in spite of the long proven importance and value of competition. We watch and suffer as monopolies become powerhouses in our country and in our government. Indeed, the press should be the strongest “slat in our bed of democracy,”
rather than its weakest.
Of course, not only have monopolies begun driving the press, the same thing is happening in most all major industries, all to the detriment of all citizens. Consider what has happened since major competitors have gained merger approval in industries such as pharmaceutical, oil, electrical, farming, ranching, wood products, groceries, dairy, health care, clothing , automobiles, etc. Consider how Wal-Mart has grown and the unhealthy reputation it (doesn’t) suffer - how little value “Goodwill” now carries on its annual report. Is it any wonder that lesser size businesses feel manipulated and compromised.
I agree Wholeness Seeker
The 4th estate is a McMansion that is soon to be foreclosed upon.
Namaste
……FREE MUMIA!…………..
…couldn’t resist….oh no, now I’m in trouble, gotta say FREE FREE PALESTINE…and how about the JENA 6?…hmm, dude’s gotta point.
From Thom Hartmann - feelings come first…there are no mistakes only outcomes, no failures only feedback…
…did I say Thom said feelings come first? They’re probable there at the end too…besides in communication, this is becoming clearly the most important factor in the fields of human development and rehabilitation.
…so at rallys the thing to do is not so much recognize each cause…but the general feeling within each cause?
Finding “Truth” in American Media is like finding a virgin in a whorehouse. There might be one there, but no customers get to see it.
Show me somebody with a White House press pass and I’ll show you a stenographer and boot licking lackey of the corporate gods 19 times in 20. There is NO journalism on television except Bill Moyers and possibly Jon Stewert. The result of this is the current situation where we have the simultaneus collapse of, well, everything. From the health care system to the real-estate boondoggle to the quagmire in Iraq all along a severe lack of reality in the public discourse prevents viable solutions from coming forward. Hell, there are journalists who still pretend with a straight face that success is possible in Iraq. (the “success” they can’t define)
Journalism is dead. Trust nobody with press credentials.
Fox news is on…..try it….if you can stand the truth.
You folks are just preaching to the choir.
And I bet lots of N. Hampton gals sit there drooling (they’d never admit it though, but they watch it “on the cuff”.
Try working on your appearances a bit; you’d be surprised and might get a date. I don’t care with whom (who)…
The wholesale robbery and destruction of Native American cultures “doesn’t matter” because it DOES matter in an ultimate foundational sense—There was no “reason” whatsoever for it except naked greed, over and over and over again, it gave the complete lie to all the colonists’ sanctimonious and self-serving garbage about “freedom,” and that, in a pseudo-free society, must be quarantined, not allowed to pollute the American mind that is still murderously colonial. (Vietnam was “Injun Country.”) Respect for The Earth? Where would our economy be? Respect for women? Then how will men know that they deserve to rule the world no matter how stupid? I agree that Moyers is leagues ahead of the media pack—but I rapidly tire of his constant gosh-darn amazement that the world is so much bigger than his homespun Christianity. Wake up and smell the history, Bill…
Banjoman: “And I bet lots of N. Hampton gals sit there drooling (they’d never admit it though, but they watch it “on the cuff”.
B-man is probable right, but this is a symptom of the problem, not a cherished truth to taunt people with - unless one wants to maintain the war state. Problem being the lack of reciprocity between the sympathetic and para-sympathetic areas of the nervous system, i.e. mistaking excitement for pleasure; never going fully into relaxed pleasure of the para-sympathetic zone: where supreme creativity comes from, but being in an agitated sympathetic zone of constant fight and constant sexual longing (”drooling” instead of capturing the nuances of the news reports and opinions).
Of course Banjoman’s statement could be supreme sarcasm, but that would depend on his feelings and where he was at in para-sympathetic and sympathetic cycling.
Bill is obviously one of the great and honorable truth tellers of our age. But to those he offers advice, he may as well be talking to the dead. Modern journalism is nothing more than a tool of corporations who own the message; a message disseminated by the enfranchised elites, and the profession now nothing more than a tool of those interests. Journalists don’t tell ‘truth’ but rather puppet ideological purity of the corporations they work for, and are owned by. We live in a moment of time when cowardice trumps honesty, when those in the profession hold labels above penetrating analysis. They take refuge under the label, while producing tripe. It is the way of things in this moment of HIStory.
At around the turn of the 20th Century those most afraid of true journalism and fearless journalists who were doing the “muckraking” to expose government and corporate crime and corruption figured out how to stop it. They worked it out that if you made news advertiser driven, economics would force out real news with sensationalism and eventually what has become know as “infotainment.” If advertisers don’t like news that they see in the media, they pull their ads.
Re: Doom n Gloom’s first post, the idea that there were a hundred million American Indians in the US, or even in both Americas, is silly. Outside of central Mexico and the Andes, native Americans lived as nomads or practiced part-time, low-yield agriculture, and these methods can’t support many people. The US with its intensive monoculture farming, industrial cities and floods of immigrants didn’t pass the 100 million mark until after 1910. Colin McEveedy’s Penguin Atlas of North American History shows 1 million natives in the US-Canada area in 1492. Attack white America’s genocide of the natives, but don’t inflate the numbers.
About the war heroes — I believe that those 4,000 plus who have died in Iraq, many who are from NY, are martyrs — you know, those who die for what they believe at the hands of one or more who want the faith in good that they have. In our time, these young martyrs are dying at the hands of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And they continue their malice by convincing the families of the slain and wounded, that more must be martyred. To these mothers and fathers and families, I ask: Why, oh, why would another mother’s son’s or daughter’s life lost to this monster of a war, somehow make your loss make more sense? Great loss brings either more pain, or compassion. Choose compassion for other mothers and fathers and families…
Jack37: “There was no “reason” whatsoever for it except naked greed, over and over and over again…” - exactly right: naked greed - a feeling and action based on feeling with no reason to it - just as unharmonious (sadistic war state) as reasoning and action with no feeling to it.
The difficulty - Jack37: “must be quarantined, not allowed to pollute the American mind that is still murderously colonial.” - harmonizing the fear state:
Recognizing the colonial mind, cloistered mind, bordered mind is a good first step - the person or group is feeling fear: depending on how ingrained the fear, no matter how clever the reasoning, not a word will be comprehended and no behavior changed until the fear state is resolved - if the person speaks only French and you shout or woo at them with German, there will be no comprehension and no accomplishment of desired behavior.
Our Boy King is a good example for us all (just one of the reasons why we could love him, but let’s not go there yet!). Bush’s humor (Justin A. Frank - Bush On The Couch) is a deflective defense mechanism to avoid touching the feelings of fear: a process he has been apprenticing and mastering since at least the age of 6 when his younger sister died; the surrounding support was an ice castle.
Humor is of course a valuable behavior, but not when it’s compulsive in a Boy King state where the most serious and solemn of matters are continually made jest of. The difficulty with Bush is that his lifestyle if so full of stimulation that he is in no position to pursue the required self mastery for over coming his insanity. Thus, for Bush as an individual it would be a loving gift to impeach him to culture the space he needs to continue developing; never mind the benefit to nation and world for the moment.
For the moment let us recognize the extreme fear that grips Bush/Cheney and their cabal: it is the non-resolution of this fear that leads to the mindless behavior action of greed - they come up with different excuse after excuse for the same murderous behavior - and let’s bring in the world here, considering the murderous behavior now includes the “reasoning” that uranium toxicity through the use of “depleted” uranium is appropriate…(point made?).
And a final point here is to stop and not move on from this fear factor until a resolution and comprehensible basis of language is established; to do other wise leaves one jousting with windmills while our genocidal/suicidal behavior continues…but for how much long?
Well, I can’t leave the final point being one of fear. Thus, something to have faith in if you haven’t already experienced it, is the fact that once the comprehensive state is achieved new behavior patterns can be established in a remarkable short period of time. Thus, just like a child with severe cerebral palsy can learn to stand, dress, and walk; and a child with brachial plexuses injury of the shoulder area can learn to reach out and touch and grasp the world with the symptomatic arm…so too can societies at large expediently change behavior and explore the world and universe to a fully, more pleasing and dignified, human extent.
But first there must be a comprehendible relationship, and the first step to that relation is to recognize and function with the fact that feeling come first.
Peace, Joy, Love.
Quote of the day:
We don’t seem to learn that all it takes to transform an ordinary politician and a braying ass into the modern incarnation of Zeus and the oracle of Delphi is an oath on the Bible, a flag in the lapel, and the invocation of national security.
Militantliberal wrote:
“Re: Doom n Gloom’s first post, the idea that there were a hundred million American Indians in the US, or even in both Americas, is silly. Outside of central Mexico and the Andes, native Americans lived as nomads or practiced part-time, low-yield agriculture, and these methods can’t support many people. The US with its intensive monoculture farming, industrial cities and floods of immigrants didn’t pass the 100 million mark until after 1910. Colin McEveedy’s Penguin Atlas of North American History shows 1 million natives in the US-Canada area in 1492. Attack white America’s genocide of the natives, but don’t inflate the numbers.”
Response: Charles Mann has completed the most recent and updated study in his book 1491. What most people do not understand is that there were more people in America than there were in Europe in 1491, therefore calling America the New World is Euro-centric.
Charles Mann puts the numbers at 112,000,000
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412113
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412156
David Stannard puts the numbers at 100,000,000
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0195085574/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-6668627-9400719#reader-link
These numbers are the numbers of Indians that died from the Euro-American Genocide. There were more.
As a degreed, former working Journalist now no longer in the field, I have a more than passing interest in Journalism and related matters of censorship and Media Ownership. I do not in any way feel Journalism is dead- there are too many people who do value truth, and some will even give their lives for it.That Common Dreams et,al survive is a testament to these brave souls.
As far as a Journalistic “Hippocratic Oath”- I believe it may be one very strong step in helping mainstream Journalism recover from bombast, half truths, full (but paid for) lies.
The Oath would have nothing do do about censorship/self censorship in any way- it would be an acknowledgement of the public trust and need for a truly (truthfully) informed public- after all who votes and who consumes and who influences (does “most of the living and dying” in all nations) if not the mass of the public.
I think a Hippocratic type oath for Journalists would have some solid effect to reign in the “profession” and help restore much needed integrity and confidence in this most basic of thinking people’s needs in the results of the journalists honest efforts.
Truth-tellers (inasmuch as one can possess it) live dangerous lives — often very short ones. It takes guts to stand against common currents.
We read that Socrates was made to drink the hemlock; Jesus, nailed to a cross; Galileo, imprisoned, blacks beaten and lynched for challenging authorities; Roger Baldwin for being a conscientious objector; Japanese, thrown into camps for their ethnicity; Jews, thrown into ovens, Darwin, scorned by peers and the church.
Citizens pay dearly for standing against the conventions and beliefs of their societies.
It’s the pretenders — those who offer comfort rather than challenges to our thinking — who get all the rewards.
But society only advances when it pays heed to the naysayers - the rebels!