Though the brilliant and tireless Bill Moyers made this speech last week at the third National Conference on Media Reform, I would feel remiss not to share it with you. For many of the Bush years, Moyers was the only voice on television speaking truth to power - before Olbermann and Cafferty were given time. For those of you who are familiar with his work, you'll also be heartened to know that he's returning to PBS with a new show covering the media. And for those of you who aren't, well, you're in for a treat.
Simply put, Bill Moyers is an impressive human being. I'll restrain myself right now from writing paragraphs on Moyers because I'd rather you read and/or listen to his words. Here are just some excerpts to whet your appetite (though I urge you not to miss one single word of this speech):
"Liberty," he said, "is a well-armed lamb, contesting the vote."
My fellow lambs -- it's good to be in Memphis and find you
well-armed with passion for democracy, readiness for action, and
courage for the next round in the fight for a free and independent
press in America. I salute the conviction that brought you here. I
cherish the spirit that fills this hall, and the camaraderie that we
share here.
All too often, the greatest obstacle to reform is the reform
movement itself. Factions rise, fences are erected, jealousies mount,
and the cause all of us believe in is lost in the shattered fragments
of what once was a clear and compelling vision.
Reformers, in fact, often remind me of Baptists. I speak as a
Baptist. I know whereof I speak. One of my favorite stories is of the
fellow who was about to jump off a bridge, when another fellow ran up
to him crying, "Stop, stop, don't do it."
The man on the bridge looks down and asks, "Why not?"
"Well, there's much to live for."
"What for?"
"Well, your faith. Your religion."
"Yes?"
"Are you religious?"
"Yes."
"Me, too. Christian or Buddhist?"
"Christian."
"Me, too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?"
"Protestant."
"Me, too. Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian?"
"Baptist."
"Me, too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Savior?"
"Baptist Church of God."
"Me, too. Are you Original Baptist Church of God or Reformed Baptist Church of God?"
"Reformed Baptist Church of God."
"Me, too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1879, or Reform Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1917?"
"1917."
Whereupon, the second fellow turned red in the face and yelled, "Die, you heretic scum," and pushed him off the bridge.
DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE A REFORM MOVEMENT? But by
avoiding contentious factionalism, you have created a strong movement.
And I will confess to you that I was skeptical when Bob McChesney and
John Nichols first raised with me the issue of media consolidation a
few years ago. I was sympathetic but skeptical. The challenge of
actually doing something about this issue beyond simply bemoaning its
impact on democracy was daunting. How could we hope to come up with an
effective response to any measurable force? It seemed inexorable,
because all over the previous decades, a series of mega-media mergers
have swept the country, each deal bigger than the last. The lobby
representing the broadcast, cable, and newspapers industries was
extremely powerful, with an iron grip on lawmakers and regulators
alike.
...
For years, the media marketplace for opinions about public policy
has been dominated by a highly disciplined, thoroughly networked,
ideological "noise machine," to use David Brock’s term. Permeated with
slogans concocted by big corporations, their lobbyists, and their think
tank subsidiaries, public discourse has effectively changed the meaning
of American values. Day after day, the ideals of fairness and liberty
and mutual responsibility have been stripped of their essential dignity
and meaning in people's lives. Day after day, the egalitarian creed of
our Declaration of Independence is trampled underfoot by hired experts
and sloganeers, who speak of the "death tax," "the ownership society,"
"the culture of life," "the liberal assault on God and family,"
"compassionate conservatism," "weak on terrorism," "the end of
history," "the clash of civilizations," "no child left behind." They
have even managed to turn the escalation of a failed war into a
"surge," as if it were a current of electricity through a wire, instead
of blood spurting from the ruptured vein of a soldier.
The Orwellian filigree of a public sphere in which language
conceals reality, and the pursuit of personal gain and partisan power,
is wrapped in rhetoric that turns truth to lies and lies to truth. So
it is that limited government has little to do with the Constitution or
local economy anymore. Now it means corporate domination and the
shifting of risk from government and business to struggling families
and workers. Family values now mean imposing a sectarian definition of
the family on everyone else. Religious freedom now means
majoritarianism and public benefits for organized religion without any
public burdens. And patriotism has come to mean blind support for
failed leaders.
It's what happens when an interlocking media system filters
through commercial values or ideology, the information and moral
viewpoints people consume in their daily lives. And by no stretch of
the imagination can we say today that the dominant institutions of our
media are guardians of democracy.
...
Likewise, people have to see how money and politics actually work
and concretely grasp the consequences for their pocketbooks and their
lives before they will act. But while media organizations supply a lot
of news and commentary, they tell us almost nothing about who really
wags the system and how. When I watch one of those faux debates on a
Washington public affairs show, with one politician saying, "This is a
bad bill," and the other politician saying, "This is a good bill," I
yearn to see the smiling, nodding, Beltway anchor suddenly interrupt
and insist, "Good bill or bad bill, this is a bought bill. Now, let's
cut to the chase. Whose financial interests are you advancing with this
bill?"
Then there's the social cost of free trade. For over a decade,
free trade has hovered over the political system like a biblical
commandment striking down anything -- trade unions, the environment,
indigenous rights, even the constitutional standing of our own laws
passed by our elected representatives -- that gets in the way of
unbridled greed. The broader negative consequences of this agenda,
increasingly well-documented by scholars, get virtually no attention in
the dominant media. Instead of reality, we get optimistic,
multicultural scenarios of coordinated global growth. And instead of
substantive debate, we get a stark formulated choice between free trade
to help the world and gloomy-sounding protectionism that will set
everyone back.
The degree to which this has become a purely ideological
debate, devoid of any factual basis that people can weigh the gains and
losses is reflected in Thomas Friedman's astonishing claim, stated not
long ago in a television interview, that he endorsed the Central
American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) without even reading it. That is
simply because it stood for "free trade." We have reached the stage
when the Poo-Bahs of punditry have only to declare that "the world is
flat," for everyone to agree it is, without going to the edge and
looking over themselves.
I think what's happened is not indifference or laziness or
incompetence, but the fact that most journalists on the plantation have
so internalized conventional wisdom that they simply accept that the
system is working as it should. I'm doing a documentary this spring
called "Buying the War," and I can't tell you again how many reporters
have told me that it just never occurred to them that high officials
would manipulate intelligence in order to go to war. Hello?
Similarly, the question of whether or not our economic system
is truly just is off the table for investigation and discussion, so
that alternative ideas, alternative critiques, alternative visions
never get a hearing. And these are but a few of the realities that are
obscured. What about this growing inequality? What about the
re-segregation of our public schools? What about the devastating onward
march of environmental deregulation? All of these are examples of what
happens when independent sources of knowledge and analysis are so few
and far between on the plantation.
So if we need to know what is happening, and Big Media won't
tell us; if we need to know why it matters, and Big Media won't tell
us; if we need to know what to do about it, and Big Media won't tell
us, it's clear what we have to do. We have to tell the story ourselves.
And this is what the plantation owners feared most of all. Over
all those decades here in the South, when they used human beings as
chattel, and quoted scripture to justify it, property rights over human
rights was God's way, they secretly lived in fear that one day --
instead of saying, "Yes, Massa" -- those gaunt, weary, sweat-soaked
field hands, bending low over the cotton under the burning sun, would
suddenly stand up straight, look around, see their sweltering and
stooping kin and say, "This ain't the product of intelligent design.
The boss man in the big house has been lying to me. Something is wrong
with this system."
This is the moment freedom begins, the moment you realize
someone else has been writing your story, and it's time you took the
pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
...
And in case you do get lonely, I'll leave you with this. As my plane
was circling Memphis the other day, I looked out across those vast
miles of fertile soil that once were plantations, watered by the
Mississippi River, and the sweat from the brow of countless men and
women who had been forced to live somebody else's story. I thought
about how in time, with a lot of martyrs, they rose up, one here, then
two, then many, forging a great movement that awakened America's
conscience and brought us closer to the elusive but beautiful promise
of the Declaration of Independence. As we made our last approach, the
words of a Marge Piercy poem began to form in my head, and I remembered
all over again why I was coming and why you were here:
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t blame them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fundraising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
