Free Republic

Commentary OK. I'll acknowledge this. Tim Russert, the host of NBC's Meet the Press, has developed into a good journalist. But just a few years ago, it would be easy to say Russert's roots were showing and I'm not talking about hair color. You see, before suddenly becoming a journalist, Tim Russert worked as a political hack for the Democratic Party. Russert was a former counselor to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and New York Governor Mario Cuomo after that, before being hired by NBC in 1984. It's clear to anyone who watches Russert today he has come a long way....

The issues that remain concern Barack Obama's judgment and his credibility. If Pastor Wright agrees to be interviewed by other than Bill Moyers, the questions should ask not for his opinions on various controversies, but for facts about his relationship with the senator. For instance, did Pastor Wright discuss Louis Farrakhan with Obama before during or after they both attended the Million Man March? Were they together during that trip. Did Senator Obama indicated unease with or criticism of Farrakhan? How often did you see Obama at Trinity on Sunday over the past twenty years? Any particular dates you can...

When Air America, the left-wing talk radio network, began, I predicted that it would not succeed. One of the main reasons I gave was that liberals already had their views expressed in the mainstream news media -- the major networks, PBS and NPR (National Public Radio), and just about every major city newspaper. Therefore, the need liberals have for liberal talk radio is nowhere near the need conservatives have for conservative talk radio. To its credit, The New York Times -- through its public editor -- has acknowledged that the Times is liberal; and anyone intellectually honest understands this is...

Jeremiah Wright, in all his omniscience, appeared on Bill Moyers’ PBS Show Friday evening April 25 and tried to justify his sermon God damning America. No matter how Wright tries to frame the reasoning for the sermon (from 2003) he falls on his face.

Radical liberal elites gather at the National Press Club on Thursday to honor other liberal radical elites who have distinguished themselves in disservice to America. The Nation Institute gives out "Ridenhour Prizes" in memory of Ron Ridenhour, a "journalist" who brought the My Lai "massacre" to the attention of the world during the Vietnam War and helped to establish the liberal template of the American soldier as a mass murderer. This years' "Courage Prize" goes to Bill Moyers, a liberal icon who established state-financed media that includes NPR and PBS. Past recipients: Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, Seymour Hersh and Daniel...

By Christopher Cook Like American blacks and Jews, homosexuals are another group of people who tend to vote for the Democrats in reflexively large percentages. And, if one is thinking solely about "gay issues," they may have reason to do so. However, I wonder how many people who are gay have taken note of the fact that Democrats will take off on homosexuals and homosexuality when it suits them politically. They do it with a touch of plausible deniability, but they send a message nonetheless.If you are gay, and you are a Democrat, and there is a prostitution ring being...

As NewsBusters reported last Saturday, PBS's Bill Moyers went on an absolutely disgraceful rant about Karl Rove, George W. Bush, and religion during the August 17 installment of "Bill Moyers Journal." Two days later, Rove was Chris Wallace's guest on "Fox News Sunday," and took issue with Moyers's comments: "Mr. Moyers ought to do a little bit better research before he does another drive-by slander." Moyers followed this up with a letter to Wallace posted at his blog Wednesday suggesting that Wallace didn't do his homework concerning Rove, and that Wallace shouldn't "take his every word as gospel." This Sunday,...

Bill Moyers Claims ‘Rove Turned Religion Into a Weapon of Political Combat’ Photo of Noel Sheppard. By Noel Sheppard | August 18, 2007 - 15:23 ET There are times when I hate being a media analyst, for I am often forced to view and review television reports and newspaper articles that literally make me nauseous while undermining my faith in journalists as a whole as well as my fellow citizens. The following video is a perfect example, a virtual piece of detritus that unfortunately is likely to offend so many viewers on so many levels that it's almost unimaginable a...

The Rove nemesis slams the exiting Bush aide as a fear-mongering manipulator.

On PBS, 'Bill Moyers Journal' Devotes An Hour to Advocating Bush-Cheney Impeachment Posted by Tim Graham on July 15, 2007 - 07:15. PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers devoted his entire hour-long Bill Moyers Journal on Friday night to the need to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney. The stacked hour had two guests, and both were aggressively pro-impeachment: John Nichols of The Nation magazine, author of the book "The Genius of Impeachment," and lawyer Bruce Fein, who Moyers labeled a "conservative," but he compared Bush to King George III, to Adolf Hitler, to the communist autocrats of the Gulag, and to, well,...

PBS’s Moyers Disgracefully Rips Fox Owner Rupert Murdoch Posted by Noel Sheppard on June 30, 2007 - 12:06. I’m not sure what derangement syndrome Bill Moyers is currently suffering from, but on Friday’s “Bill Moyers Journal” broadcast on PBS, the outspoken host went into an invective-filled tirade about media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that frankly was one of the most disgraceful exhibitions of liberal bias so far this year.In his closing monologue, Moyers compared Murdoch to the Marquis de Sade, Imelda Marcos, and Satan himself.I kid you not.For those that can stomach it, what follows is a full transcript of this...

BILL MOYERS: The gentleman you're about to meet is someone I'm also meeting for the first time, although we started in national politics in the same year long ago. And therein lies a story. Back in 1960 Vic Gold and I were both young idealists, and we both voted for John F. Kennedy for president. Except for our awe of the Alabama football legend Bear Bryant, that's probably the last time we ever agreed on anything until now. What we have in common now is the belief that politics ain't what it used to be. I went on to serve...

PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers returns his series "Bill Moyers Journal" to taxpayer-funded PBS stations on Wednesday night. On Monday, National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross offered Moyers a very favorable interview to promote the show. Near the end, Gross asked Moyers about charges of liberal bias bandied about when Kenneth Tomlinson headed the board at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Moyers said "He singled out Now with Bill Moyers for a bias that didn’t exist." Moyers didn’t try in this comfortable liberal forum to pretend completely that he was non-ideological or a "Thomas Paine radical." He proclaimed "There's...

A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore (http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2006/9/19/11408/1106?show_comments=no ) and PBS newsman Bill Moyers, for his October 11th global warming edition of “Moyers on America” titled “Is God Green?” (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/index.html ) have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming. Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bastards” who were members of what he termed the global warming “denial industry.” Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, "When...

If Davie Rossie's ramblings were simply those of one more angry liberal pundit, they'd hardly be worth a comment. But what makes his utterances noteworthy is that when Rossie isn't churning out his once-a-week column, he is editing the news for the Gannett chain. Rossie is Associate Editor of Gannett's Binghamton paper, the Press & Sun Bulletin. In today's column, 'Once There Were Giants in Television News', Rossie laments that they aren't making TV newsmen like Edgar R. Murrow any more. With what might be condemned as sexism, nay, misogyny, had it been suggested by a conservative critic, Rossie grumps...

Dear desperate Democrats, Here’s what we do. We run Bill Moyers for president. I am serious as a stroke about this. It’s simple, cheap and effective, and it will move the entire spectrum of political discussion in this country. Moyers is the only public figure who can take the entire discussion and shove it toward moral clarity just by being there. The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem-cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy. Bill Moyers...

by Mark Finkelstein July 26, 2006 - 14:00 All those millions the taxpayers have lavished on the Public Broadcasting System over the years haven't been for naught. They've achieved at least one significant thing: given Bill Moyers a base from which to launch a presidential campaign. At least in the mind of Molly Ivins. The headline of her latest column says it all: Run Bill Moyers For President, Seriously While Molly doesn't expect Moyers to win the election or even the nomination, she believes his candidacy would have a salubrious effect on other Democratic contenders. Here's the essence of her...

Call it intellectual trickle-down: Great thinkers of our time talk to Bill Moyers, then he talks to us. In the engrossing "Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason" (debuting 9 p.m. Friday on KCTS), he mind-melds with Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis and other writers on the rise of radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity, their similarities, their influence on politics — and the need for transcendence even among skeptics. The Emmy-winning broadcaster, 72, settled in for a spirited dialogue from the porch of his New Jersey home. Q: Why talk to writers about faith and reason? A: Because storytellers have...

Can religion and reason peacefully coexist? From a scan of the headlines it doesn't seem so. The world appears polarized, incapable of even agreeing to disagree on matters of faith. Journalist Bill Moyers believes that conversation can lead to a cure for what ails us -- but not conversation in which people simply shriek at each other. Moyers, who describes himself as "neither wholly a believer nor wholly a skeptic," thinks we can move away from pitting reason against faith and give equal weight to both in our discussions. Science can illuminate faith, and faith can inform science. He launches...

Bill Moyers, the former host of the "Now” program on PBS, brushed aside the claim that his show had a liberal bias, carping that conservative critics unfairly tarred him with the "liberal” brush. Perhaps Moyers forgot that he clearly showed his liberal stripes when he devoted his last "Now” broadcast to a fierce blast at "the right-wing media.” Moyers became embroiled in controversy after Kenneth Tomlinson took over as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and cited "Now” as a chief reason why he wanted to bring "balance” to public broadcasting with more conservative programming. In an interview with...

With the most powerful storm in recorded history weakening but every bit as devastating as its predecessors, saint, sinner and blogger alike are again wondering if God really does use nature in retribution for sin. Bill Moyers, late of PBS and CBS television and the day's keynote speaker, cited the incredible devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and linked it with the Genesis flood. He noted that millions of conservatives believe the biblical teaching that God brought the deluge to punish human sin and also accept "God-ordered genocide" elsewhere in the Old Testament. Others also used the Katrina moment to level...

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have Americans feeling helpless and disoriented, former White House press secretary and journalist Bill Moyers said Monday. "How do we carry on a normal life when abnormal things are happening?" Moyers said in an interview before a speech at Drake University. Moyers, a press secretary for Lyndon Johnson and a journalist who has worked in both print and television, delivered the Martin Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture Monday night at the Knapp Center. He appeared with Martin Marty, a professor emeritus from the University of Chicago and an expert on religious fundamentalism. Moyers said Americans struggle ...

Hoover's Institution Anecdotes from the FBI crypt--and lessons on how to win the war. BY LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN Wednesday, July 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT I recently completed a rewarding year as co-chairman of President Bush's commission on intelligence, and I propose to discuss our recommendations regarding the FBI in light of my own unique experience with J. Edgar Hoover. Our commission recommended that the FBI be reconstructed--to create a separate national security service within the bureau that would combine counterintelligence, counterterrorism and foreign intelligence. We did so because we concluded that the tasks of agents performing these three functions...

An extraordinary story has emerged involving former Lyndon Johnson aide and now PBS commentator Bill Moyers. The story was told in The Wall Street Journal by retired federal appeals judge Laurence Silberman, who reports that when he was acting attorney general under President Ford a memo written by Moyers to the FBI came to light in the press. The memo, which dated from the 1964 campaign between President Johnson and Barry Goldwater, directed FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover to investigate the Goldwater campaign for evidence of homosexual activity. It came after Johnson aide Walter Jenkins had been arrested in a...

This is just too good. Years ago, the compassionate lib Bill Moyers was given an assignment to out a homosexual on the Goldwater staff after Walter Jenkins was outed. Hey, Bill, sing along with us. Bill and Walter. MIDI - NEVER FIND ANOTHER YOU From the White House they called...with words from LBJ They said, "Billy Moyers, get over here today There's a Walter Jenkins problem, so your assignment's clear In the Goldwater campaign, go find a queer" You can check out rest stops or fly off to San Fran 'Cause in their bath houses, you'll find them man on...

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files. When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the...

Rosen: Subsidizing liberal bias July 1, 2005 Liberals are forever complaining that the Bush Administration "manages the news," spins it to fit its agenda. They have a point. But every administration does this. Of course, these same critics never complain that National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System indulge their own biases. Why? Because NPR and PBS manipulate their programming to fit the liberal agenda. It's a status quo that liberal cheerleaders for NPR and PBS enjoy and tenaciously defend. We expect politicians, including presidents, to be biased advocates for their own agendas. Journalistic objectivity and balance at NPR...

"Throughout Moyers' career, he was free to slander conservatives with impunity, knowing that there was no forum in thich their responses would ever be heard..."

Boulder, Colo. Founding a democracy, rather like living in a democracy, can be very tough on friendship. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson began as friends. The tensions and frictions of the early Republic took care of that. Then, after years of silence between them, a mutual friend persuaded them to write to each other. In 1812, they launched into a correspondence that continued until it was ended by their deaths. That ending point was on their minds and drove their correspondence. As Mr. Adams wrote Mr. Jefferson, "You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to...

Media harp on PBS political controversy but ignore massive government funding of public broadcasting. PBS advocate Bill Moyers is against subsidies – when they go to the wrong people. But the public broadcasting that airs the show he once hosted rides a $7 billion-plus wave of government funding – a fact that media outlets have omitted in recent coverage of budget wrangling. “Favored corporations get their contracts, subsidies and offshore loopholes,” Moyers said in a political rant on “Now,” a weekly newsmagazine, on March 26, 2004. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), has been...

At the recent so-called "media reform" conference funded by George Soros, his friend Bill Moyers delivered a keynote address. Most of it was predictable left-wing rhetoric. But he did make a point we have been making-the American taxpayers should not be forced to spend their money on a public TV show featuring members of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Moyers noted that Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, put up a considerable sum of money, about $5 million, for a new weekly broadcast featuring Paul Gigot and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Moyers...

Political opportunists in its ranks sought a wedge issue to weaken the GOP's coalition of Jews, Catholics and evangelicals and shatter its electoral majority. They passed over obvious headliners and landed on a curious but cunning choice: the environment. Those leading the charge are effective advocates: LBJ alumnus Bill Moyers of PBS fame, members of the National Council of Churches USA and liberal theologians who claim a moral superiority to other people of faith.

The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party became. That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth. Ideologues don't want you to go beyond the typical labels of left and right. They embrace a worldview that can't be proved wrong because they will admit no evidence to the contrary. They want your reporting to validate their belief system, and when it doesn't, God forbid. "I put it on to remind myself that not...

Bill Moyers, the lamented, demented former host of the PBS program "Now With Bill Moyers," referred to the American-led war in Iraq as doing "to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us." He called American flag pins "a little metallic icon of patriotism" comparable to Mao's Little Red Book being displayed on every Communist Party official's desk in China. This is silly. The metallic icons of patriotism that Mao used to keep the masses in line were considerably longer and sharper, and were usually applied to the back by a fellow "comrade." Moyers denounced Condoleezza Rice for...

***Media Research Center Viewing Alert*** 8:05pm EDT, Friday May 20, 2005 C-SPAN to Air Moyers Rant on Saturday Morning On Saturday morning, at 10am EDT (9am CDT, 8am MDT and 7am PDT), C-SPAN will air the hour-plus address by Bill Moyers last Sunday at the left-wing Free Press' "National Conference for Media Reform" held in St. Louis. His rant, including attacks on a variety of those affiliated with the "right wing," including CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, caused a bit of a stir last week. To read the text of his angry remarks: http://www.freepress.net/press/release.php?id=71 Or: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/1329245 But it's worth watching to...

I AM a longtime subscriber who is dismayed at the Globe's unwillingness to call a spade a spade -- or, more to the point, call a liberal a liberal. Liberal print is fine as long as I don't have to support it. The May 15 editorial about PBS never uses the ''L" word to describe Bill Moyers. I believe Moyers is a member of the genuinely crazy left. This same editorial describes as conservative: columnist Cal Thomas, Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal. Grover Norquist is...

I would like to find and join an organized response to stop the taxpayer funded leftwing PBS TV programming. I have searched on Google and found articles by Bozell and others but no groups actively seeking stop PBS bias. In my opinion, the programming at PBS seems quite biased to the left. Why should my taxes be spent on programming which is actively promoting the views which I am opposed to? I think PBS fairly represent all views or stay with apolitical programming. I found and signed the online petition website below but it is not what I am seeking....

ST. LOUIS - (KRT) - Bill Moyers denounced on Sunday the right wing and top officials at the White House, saying they are trying to silence their critics by controlling the news media. He also took aim at reporters who become little more than willing government "stenographers." And he said the public increasingly is content with just enough news to confirm its own biases. Moyers spoke in St. Louis at a conference on media reform. His reports have appeared on the Public Broadcasting System since the 1970s. He was an aide to President Lyndon Johnson and is a former newspaper...

A New York Times editorial writer phoned to follow up on that paper's recent Page One article that charged I was "aggressively pressing public television" to reflect the political balance and diversity required by law. At one point she expressed concern the "Wall Street Journal Editorial Report" — a public television program launched in part to balance the advocacy journalism of Bill Moyers' "NOW" — would soon dominate airwaves in major markets. I explained there was no chance of that.

The old news: PBS is still a liberal monstrosity transforming the hard-earned dollars of many Bush-loving taxpayers into fire-breathing Bush-loathing programming. The new development: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has plans to get serious about seeking a better balance of political views on PBS. From the sound of a New York Times front-page story May 2, they must have been waving smelling salts in the face of liberal reporters. Kenneth Tomlinson, the "Republican chairman" of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was said to be pressing aggressively to correct "what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias." The Times approach, pretending...

The old news: PBS is still a liberal monstrosity transforming the hard-earned dollars of many Bush-loving taxpayers into fire-breathing Bush-loathing programming. The new development: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has plans to get serious about seeking a better balance of political views on PBS. From the sound of the New York Times front page on May 2, they must have been waving smelling salts in the face of liberal reporters. Kenneth Tomlinson, the "Republican" chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was said to be pressing aggressively to correct "what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias." The Times approach,...

Sick and tired of ordinary hospitals? You owe it to yourself to check out and check into Equality Diversity Hospital, where caring is sharing and weepers are sleepers. Our staff of desiccated professionals—practical nurses, practical surgeons, cooks, caterer's assistants, manicurists, porters, mortars, pathologists, phrenologists, ornithologists, herpetologists, lepidopterists, and a few dendrologists for full flavor—that is, the whole kit and caboodle—Shave all been hired in proportion to their representation in the general population. No hospital in the entire US is as equal as Equality Diversity—or as diverse. Approximately fifty-three percent of ED staff are apparently female (we ask, but they don't...

Our friends at Powerlineblog.com wrote several weeks back about how the unctuous Bill Moyers had slandered Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt by recycling the canard that "Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’" Watt never said any such thing, and though this urban legend has been knocked down for more than 20 years, as the Moyers article shows it lives on. Moyers had to issue a public apology to Watt, as did...

MEDIA MONSTER KILLER Corporate Media, Coming of the Rapture, and the Culture of Fear: Coffee Talk with Bill Moyers by Nick Welsh Spend five minutes on the phone with Bill Moyers, dubbed by some “the conscience” of American journalism, and it’s abundantly obvious that the man is troubled, and profoundly pissed off; though it’s doubtful someone so imbued with good Southern manners would use such talk. Now 70, Moyers has spent most of the past 55 years hunting the truth behind his craft, a working journalist tracing the twisted paths of power for both newspapers and television. Embodying that rare...

Spend five minutes on the phone with Bill Moyers, dubbed by some “the conscience” of American journalism, and it’s abundantly obvious that the man is troubled, and profoundly pissed off; though it’s doubtful someone so imbued with good Southern manners would use such talk. Now 70, Moyers has spent most of the past 55 years hunting the truth behind his craft, a working journalist tracing the twisted paths of power for both newspapers and television. Embodying that rare combination of graciousness, dignity, and passion, Moyers has been audacious enough to tell “the truth behind the news,” rather than to report...

The New York Times seems highly upset that anyone would question the existence or objectivity of what they call the Public Broadcasting "Service." Last week, the paper put PBS's internal worries on Page One, concerned that pressure from conservatives threatens to send PBS lurching -- horrors! -- to the right. Liberal lobbyists inside and outside PBS, including the Times editorial page, are once again trying to convince the Congress to allow them to create a massive $5 billion endowment so they may achieve "financial independence." When PBS stations go digital, requiring less space on the broadcast spectrum, they want to...

"Slight Liberal Flavor" from Bill Moyers, But Tucker Carlson's an "Ideologue"        A Monday editorial, "Ruffling Big Bird's Feathers," laments "ultraconservative" attacks on public television and displays a distorted view of mainstream politics: "With the cable explosion, public television is no longer the only source of what was once labeled 'educational television,' nor of more serious-minded documentaries, cultural and current-events programming. And as ultraconservatives and bottom liners circle, PBS appears to be too accommodating in response. When conservatives attacked the respected Bill Moyers, labeling him a dangerous liberal, PBS offered Tucker Carlson and Paul Gigot. Whatever slight liberal flavor...

On Dec. 1, Harvard University’s Center for Health and the Global Environment gave its “Global Environmental Citizen Award” to the longtime leftist journalist Bill Moyers. Accepting the award from the actress Meryl Streep — she praised Moyers’s “resourceful, intrepid reportage,” and he praised her “special kind of courage” and declared himself “in the front row of [her] fan club” — Moyers devoted his speech to the dangers that Christian fundamentalists allegedly pose to the environment. “Remember James Watt, President Reagan’s first secretary of the interior?” Moyers said. “My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how...

ONE OF LIBERALS' chief motivations these days is fear of the religious right. Ask people on the left to explain their loathing of President Bush or the Republican party, and the answer often comes around to Jerry Falwell, evangelicals, theocracy, and so on. The left's fear of conservative Christians is fed by a steady stream of news stories. Some are accurate: religious conservatives oppose gay marriage. Some are fanciful: Sponge Bob Square Pants has been accused of being a homosexual. And some are simply false. The left's most recent salvo against the religious right was launched by an obscure online...

On Dec. 1, Harvard University’s Center for Health and the Global Environment gave its “Global Environmental Citizen Award” to the longtime liberal journalist Bill Moyers. Accepting the award from the actress Meryl Streep — she praised Moyers’s “resourceful, intrepid reportage,” and he praised her “special kind of courage” and declared himself “in the front row of [her] fan club” — Moyers devoted his speech to the dangers that Christian fundamentalists allegedly pose to the environment. “Remember James Watt, President Reagan’s first secretary of the interior?” Moyers said. “My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how...