Free Republic

Summary: If you think the media has a liberal bias today, wait until you see what the left has in store for America’s future. Extremist billionaires, “netroots” activists, and nonprofit pressure groups are creating a new media network. Through blog journalism, they aim to discredit the media outposts of the right while remaking the Internet in their own image. ... here is no argument that over the last 30 years American journalism has become increasingly powerful and pervasive. There is no escaping the modern media: It functions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is constantly updating online....

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...

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 is back in the news again, and this time no one can blame the media for making news of him. In fact, this time Wright has consciously chosen to put himself in the media spotlight. On Friday night, PBS aired an interview between Wright and Bill Moyers. On Sunday night, CNN televised Wright's speech to an NAACP event in Detroit. If we didn't get the point that the man wanted publicity, on Monday morning Wright gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. Now, in making these speeches and participating in Moyers' interview, Wright has...

In his interview with Bill Moyers, Pastor Jeremiah Wright blasted the media for failing to provide context to his much-condemned remarks. On today's show I played great portions of his sermons from April 13, 2004 and from September 16, 2001. I will post the audio here later (audio is posted). Pastor Wright has a legitimate complaint that only sound bytes have been played, but until today I had no other material to work with. The pastor could help us all if he would release recordings of all of his sermons, and Moyers ought to have asked for just that. If...

Gadzooks, this guy is arrogant! Wright more or less says the media and lack of ignorant viewers not understanding is at fault! And Bill Moyers just smiles in agreement.

More than 3,000 news stories have been penned since early April about Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. But behind the five second loop is a man who has preached three different sermons nearly every Sunday since 1972. In his interview on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, Reverend Wright discusses what drew him to the pulpit and the recent controversy surrounding him.

In a rare interview, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. said media organizations that circulated controversial sound bites of his sermons on the Internet wanted to paint him as "un-American" or "some sort of fanatic" in order to bring down Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. "I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ," Wright told journalist Bill Moyers in the first interview he has granted since comments critical of U.S. policies surfaced on television and the Internet....

Bill Moyers Journal to Air First Television Interview With Reverend Jeremiah Wright Since ControversyMonday April 21, 8:58 am ET Source: Bill Moyers Journal NEW YORK, April 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The Reverend Jeremiah Wright will be interviewed on PBS this week by Bill Moyers in his first broadcast interview with a journalist since he became embroiled in a controversy for his remarks and his relationship with Barack Obama. Wright, who retired in early 2008 as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Senator Obama is a member, has been at the center of controversy for comments he made...

On Monday’s "Lou Dobbs Tonight," host Lou Dobbs took aim at Katie Couric and Bill Moyers for "silly public statements" they’ve made regarding the practice of wearing an American flag lapel pin. "CBS's Katie Couric, of all people, taking exception to an American journalist saying 'we,' when referring to the United States.... I'm sorry, Katie Couric, but who could possibly be offended by acknowledging those troops who have sacrificed so much for us and ours?... PBS's Bill Moyers says the flag's been hijacked and turned into a logo, the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. Oh, please, Bill Moyers, you're...

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...

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,...

A public opinion poll from the American Research Group recently reported that more than four in ten Americans — 45% — favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half — 54% — favored impeachment for Vice President Cheney. Unhappiness about the war in Iraq isn't the only cause of the unsettled feelings of the electorate. Recent events like President Bush's pardoning of Scooter Libby, the refusal of Vice President Cheney's office to surrender emails under subpoena to Congress and the President's prohibition of testimony of former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers in front of the House Judiciary...

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...

Former Lyndon Johnson Press Spokesman Bill Moyers attacks Rupert Murdoch, Fox News Channel in PBS commentary. Video

ON APRIL 25, Bill Moyers' Journal, opened its prime time season on PBS with the blare of trumpets and an undisclosed amount of taxpayer support. The Washington Post and Washington Times carried full-page ads touting his new series. Other papers chimed in. The Providence Journal called Moyers's first program, "Buying the War," "must-see TV." Aware of mounting criticism of his views, in a lengthy Christian Century interview Moyers blasted the "rise of an ideological partisan press that is contemptuous of reality" that "serves up right-wing propaganda as fact, and attempts to demonize anyone who says otherwise. . . . They...

NEW YORK The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear next Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the War," which marks the return of "Bill Moyers Journal." E&P was sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week. While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous...

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...

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...

Last Friday, the National Security Archive, a research institute and library located at George Washington University that collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, celebrated its 20th anniversary. Former PBS host Bill Moyers gave a speech to the attendees that evening in which, as has been typical for him, he didn’t have very nice things to say about the Bush administration. The full text is too long to do justice to the breadth of Moyers’ antagonism towards this White House, but some of the lowlights are: “It has to be said: there has been nothing...

On Halloween night, crusty conservative Judge Laurence H. Silberman had a scary tale to tell fellow right wingers gathered for dinner at Washington's University Club. He told in more detail than ever before how J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director ''allowed -- even offered -- the bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes.'' He called for the director's name to be removed from the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington. ''In my view,'' Silberman said, ''it is as if the Defense Department were named for Aaron Burr. Liberals and conservatives should unite to support legislation to...

Well, well ...the uber-liberal should be ashamed. Why didn't he do a mea culpa sometime over the last 30 years? 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...

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...

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...

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...

An extraordinary story has emerged involving former Lyndon Johnson aide and now PBS commentator Bill Moyers (search). 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.

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. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed...

A battle rages between Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who believes PBS and NPR slant too far left and need better balance, and Bill Moyers and his ideological soul mates, who think public broadcasting is fine as it is. Rather than debate the bias issue, lefties have tried to smear Mr. Tomlinson. The New York Times carried a Page One story June 21 that said evidence assembled by Mr. Tomlinson that produced his bias charge was gathered by a researcher who once worked for the American Conservative Union. The story was meant to divert attention from...

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...

A researcher retained secretly by the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to monitor the "Now" program with Bill Moyers for political objectivity last year, worked for 20 years at a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union and a conservative columnist, an official at the journalism center said on Monday. The decision by the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, to retain the researcher, Fred Mann, without the knowledge of the corporation's board, to report on the political leanings of the guests of "Now" is one of several issues under investigation by the corporation's inspector general. At the request...

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.

Former Sec. Interior under Reagan responds to charges against Christians and himself posed by the "Religious Left" in a Washington Post Op-Ed. There is also a good frame of reference peice on Powerline.

Hey Guys (and gals), Involved in an argument at work. I'm totally swamped with things, and I'm getting peppered by co-workers who are on me after I stated that PBS's bias needs to be corrected or else the funds should be withheld. I don't have to research it all right now, and they aren't satisfied with my Bill Moyers is a flaming liberal answer; could really use your help with this. Thanks a ton. John

The Media Research Center Annual Gala and Media DisHonors Awards Cal Thomas, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Neal Boortz, Zell Miller, Midge Decter, T. Boone Pickens and Janet Parshall highlighted the presentations and acceptances of MRC's "2005 Dishonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2004," which were presented on Thursday night, April 21, before an audience of more than 950 -- our largest crowd ever -- packed into the Grand Ballroom of the J.W. Marriott in Washington, D.C. Following the presentation of the Dishonors Awards videos in five categories, a look at the Best of the Worst of...

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...

Dear Mr. Moyers: I’ve been meaning to write you for quite some time, in fact, if the truth were known, I originally intended to communicate with you in 1964, when as Special Assistant to Lyndon Johnson, you approved that television ad showing a small girl picking daisy petals as a nuclear blast in the background foreshadows, not only her demise but also, the deaths of thousands. Johnson’s voice then came on to tell us, “…We must love each other or we must die.” [!] Were you trying to set new standards for your successors in coming elections? At any rate,...

A blogger brought to my attention an Op Ex article by Bill Moyers that appeared in the Jan. 30 Star Tribune entitled, "There is no tomorrow." The third paragraph reads as follows: "Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James 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.' " I have never thought, believed or said...

NEW YORK Bill Moyers has apologized to former U.S. Interior Secretary James Watt for referencing a quote, which has been wrongly attributed to Watt for years, during a speech Moyers gave last December upon receiving an award from Harvard Medical School. The text of the speech has since appeared in several newspapers and on numerous Web sites. "I said I had made a mistake in quoting him without checking with him," Moyers told E&P today. "I should have done my homework." Moyers, a well-known journalist and recently departed host of NOW on PBS, said he phoned Watt yesterday and faxed...

Former Secretary of the Interior James Watt says commentator Bill Moyers smeared him by falsely claiming he was a religious nut who told the U.S. Congress that protecting the environment was not important because Jesus would come back soon. Watt, who served under President Reagan, has asked Moyers to apologize for his assertions in a speech published Jan. 30 as an op-ed piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Commenting on President Bush after receiving an environmental award from Harvard Medical School, Moyers said the administration's environmental policies are "based on theology" and therefore "delusional." Moyers said: Remember James Watt, President...

"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..."

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the...

Bill Moyers, the former aide to the late President Johnson and a well known liberal fixture on public broadcasting where he hosted his "Now" program, devoted his final program Friday night to an intemperate blast at the alleged the dominance of "right-wing ranting in TV and radio" according to the Washington Post's TV critic Tom Shales. Though Moyers claimed on election night that some Bush supporters might undertake a coup if Kerry was election, Shales claimed the liberal pundit "has always taken the high road." No doubt one liberal would think highly of another who spent his last tax funded...

He's trashing Conservative commentators. Really funny but very pathetic at the same time. They are obviously in melt-down mode!

After 33 years as a TV journalist and commentator -- and prior careers in the Lyndon Johnson White House and as publisher of Newsday -- Bill Moyers is walking away from television. Bill Moyers, nearing 70, has decided to retire from the television grind. The final installment of Now With Bill Moyers, his eclectic and thoughtful PBS series, airs at 9 tonight on Channel 8. Moyers, whose celebrated TV career includes such inspirational series as Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, The World of Ideas and several outstanding editions of CBS Reports, is calling it quits -- and is...

MOYERS: A recent CBS/New York Times poll found that more than half of Americans believed that human beings were created by God just as we are today, and 65% said that biblical creation should be part of the curriculum, along with evolution. These Bible-based beliefs about the origins of life are churning American politics. As USA Today reported recently, there have been efforts in 24 states this year to challenge the teaching of evolution in public schools. Because the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that creationism is a religious belief and can't be taught in public schools, this biblical worldview...

(AP) "I was just in the editing room, working on the last piece," Bill Moyers says. "I thought: 'I've done this so many times, and each one is as difficult as the last one.' Maybe finally I've broken the habit." It hasn't been so much a habit for Moyers as a truth-telling mission during his three decades as a TV journalist. But come next week, he will sign off from Now, the weekly PBS newsmagazine he began in 2002, as, at age 70, he retires from television. "I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story...

The following exchange took place on Charlie Rose's show on PBS, election night. His guest was Bill Moyers. Does it seem like our friends on the left are getting just a little paranoid? (See also Walter Cronkite's unusual insights on the Karl Rove/Osama bin Laden connection). MOYERS: As Joe said, I don't -- I don't believe -- I think if Kerry were to win this in a tight race, I think there would be an effort to mount a coupe, quite frankly. ROSE: What do you mean by a coup? MOYERS: I mean that the right-wing is not going to...

"...They helped me relearn another 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. Unless you’re willing to fight and refight 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 hit after unfair hit accusing you of “bias”, or these days even a point of view, there’s no use...