"Buying The War" was, hands down, the finest piece of broadcast journalism I've ever seen in my life. He said a couple of years ago when he announced his retirement that he had finally broken the habit. Well, the man is back on a serious bender and we're all the better for it.

If you missed it on Wednesday it will be repeated Saturday afternoon at 1:30 EST. Trust me on this one, campers, this program is a must see. If you can't be home to watch it, tape it! This is essential television.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
"The Rant" by Tom Degan

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Other than Moyers, no American knows more about how lazy, irresponsible and overpaid is the media elite in Washington, D.C., than me.

In February 2004 while surfing the Internet for information about Bush 43’s National Guard record, I found a falsified official biography of his that someone in the White House had inadvertently posted on a U.S. State Department website.

Brazenly, the fabricated personal history claimed Shrub had flown ANG F102s almost SIX years when the actual time was 27 months.

The text contains other misrepresentations as well -- all intentional, not typos or mistaken dictation.

For example, the bogus bio asserted that George W. spent four years helping to keep two F102s on strip alert. In truth, he was only qualified for alert duty 22 months and the last 60 days were plagued by pilot problems attributed to poor airmanship, excessive drinking and a rumored fear of flying.

So why was the phony bio written, you might wonder?

According to my case theory, in 2000, then Texas Governor Bush inflated his weekend warrior duty to make him competitive with his only viable Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, who spent five and a half years as a POW during the Vietnam War.

At the time, Bush campaign people believed his Guard records in Houston had been destroyed. That was true. However, the scoundrels didn’t know in 2000 there were duplicate documents in an Air Force depository in Colorado, which were later released to the public because of persistent Freedom of Information Act requests.

After McCain won the New Hampshire primary, he was targeted for dirty GOP campaign tricks reportedly orchestrated by Karl Rove. The scurrilous tactics worked. McCain dropped out the race and copies of the bogus bio were shredded except for the one accidentally sent to the State Department after Bush took office as a replacement for President Clinton’s history.

Republicans will argue that Bush never knew about the bogus State Department bio. However, specific details such as "two F102s on round-the-clock alert" were most likely known only by him.

Shrub also had a reputation for a fiery temper and maintaining tight management control. It is inconceivable that a member of the 2000 campaign team would risk his wrath and certain termination by publishing a false ANG record for public consumption without Governor Bush's approval.

To validate the smoking-gun indicator of White House corruption, I called the Boston Globe. Impressed, it ran the story the next morning, on 02/28/04, under the headline, “Bush Bio on Web Inflates Guard Service,” and gave me credit as the source.

Unfortunately for voters in 2004 who deserved to know about Dub-ya's phony flying history, NO other paper or media outlet in the United States carried the story. Why? Because the Globe article was published on a Saturday.

Back then apparently, people in the news business took weekends off instead of serving the public good. To this day, I can’t help thinking if my name had been “Bob Woodward,” not only would Bush's bogus bio have received the nationwide coverage it deserved, but Al Gore would be president right now and we wouldn’t be stuck in Iraq.

To make up for the media’s failure, I always end my AlterNet comments the same way, so as to inform new visitors daily. The brief addendum sometimes irritates old bloggers but too bad. Alerting my fellow Americans to Bush’s aborted attempt in 2000 to cover up his AWOL Guard record is a patriotic duty I am compelled to carry out.

Hugh E. Scott, editor of King-George.biz -- the only website with hardcopy proof of White House corruption.

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Tonight is the first regular installment of "Bill Moyers' Journal" - a Jon Stewart interview is featured. He was hounded from PBS by this administration - apparently somebody has grown a pair.

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yes- Bill Moyers, is an important person and i enjoy his presence in the media. actually, he gives me hope.

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The rest of the country that is desperate to find intelligent discussions on public affairs is lucky to have PBS. However, those of us who have only WNED in Buffalo to rely on for PBS programs are out of luck. While it aired the initial episode of Bill Moyers Journal on Wednesday night, it is not scheduling the regular shows at all.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, WNED doesn't carry the PBS Friday night public affairs line-up at all, instead dividing it into pieces and dropping some of the shows in the late hours of the night or late afternoon when adults aren't home and, even if they are, kids are watching enlightening shows such as Pimp My Ride or Real World: Denver or re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond.

Still, when I realised that the Journal was not being carried at all by WNED, I sent the following letter to the station's Viewer Services department since none of the station executives have an e-mail address listed on the website (www.wned.org).
- - - - -
Dear Ms. Davies,

I am writing to you because no e-mail addresses are listed on your website for either Mr. Boswell (Note: WNED president) or Mr. Daley (WNED program director), and I am protesting the incomprehensible decision by WNED TV to not carry the new season of the highly-acclaimed program, Bill Moyers Journal.

Furthermore, I am appalled that, in place of the PBS public affairs shows, on Friday nights WNED offers a tired, old movie that is available on a myriad of other channels or for rent for $3 at most video stores, and a Monty Python episode. Poor Gwen Ifill is tossed into a time slot that comes so late in the day that an interested viewer has to change their bedtime habits in order to watch a mostly-interesting panel discussion.

It is bad enough that the station relegates the PBS Friday night public affairs line-up to late night (in the case of Washington Week) or late afternoon (in the case of NOW), in both instances airing at times when far fewer viewers are able to watch them. But to not be able to find a spot on your prime time schedule for one of America's premiere journalists and his thoughtful, informed and insightful interviews is a travesty.

And what are you airing instead of Bill Moyers Journal on Wednesday night? Waiting for God for at least the seventh or eighth time -- I'll let you in on a secret: We all know how it ends; hell, we all know the dialogue of each episode by heart -- followed by Secrets of the Dead for the third or fourth time and then two hours on the history of Atlantic Records.

This is quality programming?

During your seemingly ubiquitous pledge breaks, Goldie and the other ancients who get propped up in easy chairs and plugged in before a camera to beg for money yelp about "the best television on television." I don't consider Secrets of the Dead, Antique Roadshow, Keeping Up Appearances, Last of the Summer Wine or a creaky movie that a sizeable majority of your viewers have undoubtedly seen countless times before to be "the best television on television."

I can only assume that not carrying Bill Moyers at all, and slotting shows such as Washington Week and NOW in black hole time spots, means that either WNED is content betraying its public trust, the station lacks anyone who knows how to program or, perhaps more likely, lacks the courage needed to stand up to any right wing goon squads roaming Western New York that might criticise you, or that .

Regardless of the reason, WNED should be ashamed of itself.

James Charles

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I usually never watch Corporate News, let alone the pathetic so called public mediums like PBS, or NPR Radio, because they are just as corporate, nationalistic, appeasing class mercenaries as any major corporate station. However, Bill Moyer, despite his somewhat appeasing class liberal credentials, which ignores the source of corruption, class despotism on democracy, my wife, friends, watched the documentary and were glad we did.

The corporate, class nationalist, warmongering cheerleaders in both public and private realms, through their class ideology, leading up to the war was nauseating, criminal, and complicit, typical of the liberal, class appeasing, Nevile Chamberlains in spades, servile to Corporate imperial policies, corporate fascism, as Neville did with Hitler and German Coporate Fascism.

The thing that was most aggravating, as it showed near the end of the documentary, is how the Zionist, fascist, neocon thugs, and zionist liberal hawks, like Thomas Friedman, Kristol, Krauthammer, and all the so called "expert" idiots, on terrorism, (translation: experts for state terrorism, with loyalties to the Likudist, fascist thugs of Israel), have zero credibility, and which has put the New York Times and Washington Post on display as servile whores for both Amerikan class Empire and Israel, yet still allow them on the air, and write in their newspapers, allowing these class thugs, propagandists, and editorialists to continue their same class nationalist propaganda, especially that worthless, so called public Radio, NPR zionist radio.

All of these class elites, mercenary class thugs, and their punidts, editorialists, should be put out of business for their lies, and criminal complicity. We need to, not just go after the executive, judiical nazis, appeasing dictatorship and torture, and the war criminals in Congress, both democratic and republican congresspeople, we need to go after the Corporate, so called "mainstream" media, and expose them as institutional thugs for Corporate Fascism, by boycotting corporate news. Boycott the Corporate media, and start reading alternative news, like Alternet, Counterpunch, Znet, Common dreams, and others, and leave the rot of Corporate fascist nationalist, warmongering news behind.

Down with all the class elites, both liberal and neocons who appease AIPAC, Israeli class nationalism, and Amerikan Class Empire, hence ignore the the Corporate media's phony claims about Barack Obama, Hillary, Edwards as "rock stars", who routinely show up at AIPAC's warmongering shows, while ingoring Kucinich who does not cower, appease AIPAC'S fascism, or the Christian Nazis who are in an alliance of ignorance, and Evil, to keep the public in the dark. Corporate News sucks bigtime. Boycott their asses.

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My favorite moment here is the quote from what (the complete idiot) New York Times White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller said to defend her obsequious prostration to Bush at a pre-Iraq war press conference. Like a good empiricist, she accurately records what she felt at that time: an overwhelming desire to prostrate herself to political authority, even when that authority is a mumbling,slimy, creep uttering transparent lies. Folks, this is how Italy got Mussolini and Germany got Hitler: the press (and much of the population) gazed at their wonderful national patriot and said "Yes, Boss, anything you say Boss." Sieg Heil! The Italian and German press at least had some excuse: they might have gotten shot if they disobeyed. The NYT and the rest of these "journalists" willingly do what their European counterparts would not do without guns to their heads. This is absolutely revolting.-- Joe

"We were very deferential becauseÖit's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time."

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A few decades ago, the offices of the better newspapers were havens for the tribe of trouble-makers who called themselves journalists. Some of the better reporters were only an alimony payment away from jail themselves, and the pint of whiskey in the desk drawer was an industry tradition.

They were unprofessional in many ways, but the best of them had one thing in common: an undying mistrust of, and animosity toward, politicians in general and federal politicians in particular.

All that has changed now in wake of the corporate media takeovers that began in earnest in the '80s and continue today. Journalism now is a profession in the worst sense of the word. Media employees wear business attire, shower frequently, think very conventional thoughts and are very, very good at sucking up to their corporate bosses.

Bill Moyers' excellent documentary on the media's pro-war stampede and David Sirota's fine column above barely scratch the surface. A finger-in-the-wind attitude permeates today's news reporting, and it's because of the kind of people the corporate media hire and promote. No wonder they huddle together at Nantucket and other posh venues.

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And it's obvious what you are.

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Right on...Just enough to make people see a light waaay at the end of the tunnel, but nothing of real substance of why this whole mess started to begin with.
Rosie started the fire, but now, as if magical, she's 'quitting' in June.

I hope [knowing the person she is], that she continues somehow................
along with others in the so-called media eye........peaceout.........

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Right, yeah, sure.

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And what exactly have you done to try and un-do the extensive damage done by the US media? Write demaning posts on websites against people who actually have done something? What you are: pathetic!!!

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No shit.

I'll add MoveOn, Buzzflash, AlterNet, The Nation and just about every other faux-progressive "mainstream" publication/website out there who poo-poo any meaningful investigation into the crime of the century.

All are red-herrings designed to make the so-called, self-proclaimed "progressives" feel like they're properly informed and politically correct in their ire, while missing the big fucking elephant in the room of 9/11.

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Dear J Morse, The word is "incompetent," not "incompetant." Make a note.

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You may be "incompetant" for misspelling incompetent. At the very least, your poor spelling has called your intelligence into question.

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"The government sees things realistically and sensibly, as they are, but depends less on understanding than on imagination."
- Joseph Goebbels in "The Realities of War" speech, Aug. 1943

Apparently, the editorial boards of the Washington Post and The NY Times sympathized with the creative efforts of the Bush Administration sales pitch for war. There's little other way to explain how these to bastions of investigative journalism failed to follow the lead of the few who did not lose their sense of professional responsibility, moral obligation and a clear history of governmental "imagination".

While as a nation we will continue to pay a severe price for the absence of sufficient journalistic resistance to the Administration's "imagination", we shouldn't forget that Murrow stood largely alone against another institutional initiative based in the creative use of fear.

We owe much to the likes of Bill Moyers. And it's becoming ever more clear why there was such an initiative to discredit and silence him.

Thanks Bill.

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Fantastic special... too bad everyone was "Giving Back with Idol" to save the world over on the American Idol telethon over on FAUX. Who the hell scheduled this much-needed special to run against THAT? The same geniuses who gave us the Goebbels masterwork "At The Crossroads", NO DOUBT.

And the 90 minutes didn't for a single second wipe out the TEN HOUR LONG "At The Crossroads" anti-Islamic Bush propaganda fest PBS ran THE ENTIRE WEEK BEFORE.

PBS, with its new hourly National Guard recruitment ads, paid for by, you guessed it, the new PBS sponsor, THE US GOVERNMENT, takes one tiny step forward, AFTER TAKING A HUNDRED STEPS BACKWARD.

Thanks but no thanks.

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Bill Moyers expose of the complete and total falling down of MSM journalists in the 'run-up' to the war (like it's a football game, for God's sake!) didn't really tell me anything I didn't know before; but it is crucial programming at a time when many people still think Saddam was behind 911. Somehow, even lacking the information the media was privy too, 100,000,000 people around the globe who protested the war the weekend before it began knew what the media apparently didn't-- that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfewitz, Rice, and the other armchair warriors playing Risk with other people's lives WOULD have their war no matter what, that it was based on lies and conspiracy, and that it's sole goal was corporate gain. Four years later we have Iraq devolving into utter chaos, hundreds of thousands dead, and a staggering deficit which, spent elsewhere (education, health care, etc) could have arrested the vivisection of the lower and middle classes. History shows that there has been no lack, alas, of evil rulers-- evil we shall always have among us-- but with a complicit, compliant media greasing the skids, anything can happen. The media must bear the responsibility of allowing this nightmare to happen, and continue.

J.G. Hayes
Author
A Map of the Harbor Islands

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Moyers superb piece demonstrates that the best reporting about the build-up to this war was done by two smart guys using old-fashioned reporting techniques and materials readily available on the internet. Jon Landay, Warren Strobel, and James Wolcott, their supportive bureau chief at Knight Ridder, turned out story after story on the errors of the Administration's ways, which sometimes papers in their own chain refused to run in deference to wire service stories that gave credibillity to lies. Sadly, the NYTimes and the Washington Post and the networks ignore any news that one of them does not produce. Sadly, Knight Ridder has been broken up. Sadly, Judy Miller and Bill Kristol are famous and Landay and Strobel are not.

Inadvertantly perhaps, Moyers makes the case that the enormous media contingent that travels with the President is a waste of government and media money. Reporters onboard live in a bubble, controlled by the White House, and they are reluctant to jeopardize their access. But access to what? Lies, spin, the party line. Bob Simon, who lived in the Middle East, says never in his wildest dreams would Saddam Hussein have tolerated Al Queada in Iraq, but look how many people bought it. And now we can't bring ourselves to see how many people were killed by those lies.

BTW, I wish Moyers had found a way to salute the exceptional Helen Thomas, who raised her tough questions to much opposition.

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I am re-posting this:
Absolutely correct. But I do believe it is not "elitism"I believe the beginning of the end of journalism as a passion for Truth rather than a career choice started in the 80's with the rise of health care costs.
Young people could no longer jeopardize their health- insurance- through -employer- so truth was out & holding on to the job was/is imperative. ergo: Do/say "nothing 'outlandish" , "against the tide", or "embarrasing to your employer".
In 1992 I remember asking a young female Librarian who expressed a desire to travel Europe - Why not go !? Reply: I can't. I would lose my health coverage.
Now it is a question of life or death.
Moving with the establisment is JOB SECURITY = decent affordable Health Insurance.
Few people can hold to their principles if it means, not 'no paycheck' but no HEALTH INSURANCE. and I can not say it LOUDLY enough !!

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Bill Moyers gave a blockbuster journalistic performance on April 25. It should have been watched by every American who is concerned about how the corporate media strives to mold opinion by slanting the news. Unfortunately, Moyers was probably preaching to the choir, while more Americans were watching American Idol. Against the backdrop of the fawning Washington press corps and the pandering pundits who fed us White House propaganda, the solid journalistic efforts of the Knight-Ridder team gave us a glimpse of what news reporting once was. Unfortunately, the expert reporting of Landay, Strobel, and Wolcott was drowned out by the lies and nonsense constantly fed to us by The New York Times and The Washington Post. The sad fact is that people like George Will, Bill Kristol, Thomas Friedman, and Charles Krauthammer still run off their mouths in their columns and on television. Tim Russert continues to cozy up to the people he interviews on "Meet the Press"and feed them softballs. The corporate media does not give up. They thrive on keeping the American public dulled down on pretentious pap while they continue to reap profits bestowed on them by a grateful ruling class.

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Knoller is either lying or a complete idiot/tool. Bill Moyers not only is a journalist, he was a Press Secretary and knows well how the game is played and has been played.

Robert Fisk has it right- these people are stenographers for those in power. They get chummy and dependent upon the very people they are supposed to be reporting on. No detachment at all.

A real journalist that used to work at CBS, Edward R. Murrow, had a practice worth noting with new hires. He would ask them out for a drink after their first day of work and then tell them this:

Just because your voice now reaches halfway around the world, it doesn't mean you are any smarter than when it only reached the end of the bar.

I think the faux journalists of the beltway and manhattan would be well advised to remember that.

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Mr. Moyers spanked good the Beltway and mainstream media. But the analysis didn‘t go far enough. What allowed Knight Ridder to keep its independents and skepticism while just about everyone else supplicated like a sycophant? Was it simply the character of the individual journalists at Knight Ridder or did we witness system failure of the corporate media?

Buying the War was not simply good entertainment for you and me. A more complete analysis needs to be done. This one didn’t go far enough. We should all be thinking that more questions were raised than answered.

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It was a very good piece of journalism not infotainment.

I just hope that Jounalism Schools use tools like this to teach and generate some ethical thinking for the next generation of Reporters.

And I also want to shine the light on the hard work by the guys at Knight Ridder.

Thanks to all.

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... the problem is not in the sources themselves, but in the mindset that analyzes and evaluates the information given out... These people work together, live together, and often marry each other (no one objected, for example, when Christiane Amanpour was given a leading role in reporting on the Kosovo war when her husband, Robert Rubin, was a spokesman for Madeleine Albright’s State Department).

Here’s Walter Isaacson, formerly chairman and CEO of CNN:

"There was even almost a patriotism police which, you know, they'd be up there on the internet sort of picking anything a Christiane Amanpour, or somebody else would say as if it were disloyal."

Yet this "patriotism police" didn’t have police powers: journalists were free to broadcast and write what they pleased, and media outlets were free to carry it: so what was the problem? Was the head of one of the biggest cable television outfits in the world really afraid of what a few fiercely partisan bloggers were going to say about him and his network? That’s hard to believe...

Isaacson tried to pin the blame on Fox News, whining that:

"We were caught between this patriotic fervor and a competitor who was using that to their advantage; they were pushing the fact that CNN was too liberal that we were sort of vaguely anti-American."

Oh, poor baby! Come to Mama! The fact is that there was nothing to stop CNN from attacking Fox as a shill for the administration: indeed, it would have made for some good television, and helped their ratings. Nothing is better than a good old feud, as MSNBC has recently learned (there’s a reason why Keith Olbermann keeps twisting the knife in Bill O’Reilly’s ribs, aside from the sheer joy of doing it). But that apparently never occurred to Senor Isaacson: instead, he and his ilk chose to cut and run – and lose whatever journalistic integrity they could previously lay claim to.

Isaacson mumbles something about too much reliance on "top level sources," but really this doesn’t cover it. The problem clearly goes much deeper than that: after all, why should one believe those "top level sources"? These are high government officials who are hardly unbiased, and, in this case, were actively trying everything they could to sell a war. Whatever happened to caveat emptor?

Beinart puts it, we’d "be a better society if people got most of their news from print rather than television," but that we’d be a lot better off if we saw less of him and his fellow neocons on television. The problem is the message, not the medium.

full article

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in the Bill Moyers piece that was never even touched on is the influence of AIPAC and the Zionist agenda as the motivation to publish the lies that greased the run-up to war. The Iraq war serves to make the Mideast safer for Israel by weakening Israel's enemys, and Judith Miller, Krautmeyer, and the host of other Jewish reporters profiled as the pushers of the war lies served this agenda. It's a shame that one can't even mention the significant influence AIPAC has over American press and politics - not even Bill Moyers dare speak it.

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As a journalist and writer for damn near 50 years, I've always questioned how much of Uncle Duke's self-described drug and alcohol bingers were true and how much was -- like a lot about Hunter Thompson -- his own literary invention.

After two or three Scotches or a few glasses of wine, I can barely mumble a coherent thought, let alone string together a couple of thousand, really well-written words. I have no doubt that Thompson's tolerance for drugs and booze was a lot higher than mine ever was, but it always occured to me that when he was at his prime, he was never nearly as stoned or drunk as he claimed to be.

Not to distract at all on his impact on a generation of reporters -- me among them -- nor on the power of what he wrote, Thompson's best publicist and image-maker always was Hunter Thompson.

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Folks, if this doesn't get the "opposition?" party moving...then what will? Pelosi says "no impeachment?" Uhh, this ain't no party...this ain't no blue dress, this ain't no missing 17mns; this is the Treason Disco. Indisputable, frame-by-frame documentary provides the Proof of calculated, scripted, brazen, shameless, (evil) and deceitful manipulation of this country, hand in hand w/the power of media consolidation/cooperation. If this documentary had been around, Orwell wouldn't have had to write "1984." Something like this would have started the French Revolution, or the overthrow of the Russian monarchy. Thank you Bill, the Lone Voice ('crying in the wilderness.') I sent 10 copies to friends around the country the next day. Count on me to call representatives, get involved locally, and work for change. Look up from your gruel, people! We are 'goners!'

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Time for American journalists to take a page from the BBC journalists, who with a laser determination are able to ask the tough questions that Americans seem mostly unable to do (with exception of the marvelous Moyers). Journalism isn't a club to become chummy with the powers that be--least it wasn't when I was in J-school, so get over yourself and just question authority manners be damned.

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And we can hope that fear of future humiliation will help prevent another gross abdication of responsibility next time around.

Don't bet on it. These guys aren't reporters, they're self-serving pretty faces who will suck up to anyone that might improve their bottom line.

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If you piss off the right people, you know you're doing a good job. Journalism is supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and the Washington press corps' relationship with government is way to cozy. "Buying the War" was phenomenal and we're so fortunate to have Mr. Moyers back on television. Cheers!

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We need 1,000 more like him!

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i wonder why that one was chosen to go along with this article. there were so many more outrageous moments in the moyer's documentary.

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