Moyers Gets the Hook It seems that Bill Moyers has even managed to spook some PBS executives with his radical show. (Oh, and he throws an elbow at The Factor, too.) by Stephen F. Hayes 07/26/2002 12:15:00 AM
SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, I took a long look at the nation's foremost liberal scold, Bill Moyers (here and here). Among the many questions the article raised was this one: Why would a show dedicated to promoting the views of the most extreme elements of the far left in America get a coveted prime-time spot on the television network funded by the American taxpayers?
Some PBS sympathizers guessed that the decision-makers at PBS either didn't know or didn't recognize just how left-wing the avuncular Moyers has become. There is some support for that speculation. At their convention last month, PBS executives invited the likes of Alan Alda, Robert Redford, and Ted Turner to address the gathering. One local PBS executive phoned in his complaint to The Weekly Standard. "I'm sitting here looking at the schedule and I can't find a single right-of-center person on the entire thing." So, yes, despite years of criticism that PBS skews dramatically to the left, maybe PBS big-wigs are still ideologically oblivious. It's the ideological equivalent of Shaquille O'Neal looking at Manute Bol--he's tall, but he's not that tall.
But now, thanks to a report in April 8 issue of the Nation, we can posit a second hypothesis. PBS executives deliberately carved out a prime-time spot for Moyers because they see such programming as central to their mission. Indeed, at the PBS pow-wow last month, Moyers participated in a pep-talk dressed up as a panel discussion to address the issue directly: "Reaffirming Our Relevance--Public Affairs and the Public Broadcasting Mission."...
(from http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/498tngbc.asp)
Preaching to the Choir It wouldn't be a Republican victory without a dyspeptic attack from Bill Moyers. Paid for, in part, by you. by Stephen F. Hayes 11/12/2002 12:00:00 AM
TO READ Bill Moyers's latest rant about the 2002 election results, one might conclude that the biggest threat America faces is the Republican party. To wit:
"And for the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government--the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary--is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush now believes he has a mandate. That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture . . ."
And on it goes. For those of you unfamiliar with Bill Moyers's ongoing, taxpayer-financed self-immolation, such vituperative rhetoric might seem excessive. Alas, this post-election commentary is doused with restraint compared to his outbursts shortly after the September 11 attacks. In one speech at the University of Texas, an enraged Moyers sounded alarms about the dual threats to American democracy: religious "true believers" like Osama bin Laden, and the "true believers in the God of the market." ...
(from http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/901fpobf.as p)
PBS's Pontificator
>From the June 9, 2003 issue: Whatever happened to Bill Moyers's
promise to disclose conflicts of interest?
by Stephen F. Hayes
06/09/2003, Volume 008, Issue 38
JUST TO DECLARE MY INTEREST at the outset: Bill Moyers and I have a history. I wrote an article about him (PBS's Televangelist, February 25, 2002) that made Moyers mad. The gist of the piece was simple: Bill Moyers flagrantly indulges in the same conflicts of interest, Washington logrolling, and mutual back-scratching that he finds deeply objectionable in, well, everyone other than Bill Moyers. There were piles of documents--from IRS filings to internal records from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting--that supported this conclusion.
In his dual roles as head of the $75 million Florence and John Schumann Foundation and PBS Pontificator-in-Chief, Moyers regularly interviews the people he funds (conflict of interest). He has gotten rich at "the public trough," producing shows partially financed by taxpayers and lining his pockets with the royalties (profiteering). And while he demands strict disclosure of others in the public sector, Moyers rarely tells his viewers when his interview subjects are the recipients of his foundation's grants or discloses details of his own financial relationship with public broadcasting. The Enron-like lack of transparency at PBS has caught the attention of Rep. Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has oversight of PBS. Tauzin has asked the General Accounting Office to look into government-funded broadcasting, indicating a particular interest in Moyers and his refusal to let taxpayers know what's happening with their money...
(from http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/002/749qcwsk.asp)
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I am posting this petty and contentious gossip on Moyers because Moyer's left PBS NOW last week. He had announced his departure I think sometime just before the election.
But I have to wonder if PBS wasn't pressured in some fashion or other to get rid of Moyers. I suspect the boys at the Weekly Standard. Each Friday PBS airs the Weekly Standard's chrubbic and jolly David Brooks on The Lehrer NewsHour, against the hapless, sputtering, and mostly incoherent Mark Shields. I guess that's `fair and balanced'. But an hour of Moyers soft spoken, well reasoned and vaguely religious concern over the destruction of public discourse in the US is just over the top leftwing radicalism that must be crushed.
Oh, yeah.
CG