Tuesday November 29, 2005

Moyers Strikes Back

Bill Moyers, the prime target of Ken Tomlinson’s ill-fated ideological crusade at PBS, talks to Broadcasting & Cable about allegations of bias and the pressure Tomlinson applied to turn PBS to the right. “Right-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive reporting as liberal,” Moyers says. “We were biased, all right—in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq.”

He also tells of the “excruciating pressure” applied to PBS executives based on the alleged slant of Moyers’ reporting. (Pressure that Tomlinson boasted about in a series of e-mails to Paul Gigot.) So why did Moyers leave PBS? “I needed a break, and I also sensed that we were up against serial abusers and that I could fight back more effectively if I weren’t on the air,” he says. I think that’s Bill’s way of saying, “It is on.”

[Via Synaptic Junction Daily.]