Broadcast Legend Bill Moyers on Media Reform: “Democracy Only Works When Ordinary People Claim It as

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Broadcast Legend Bill Moyers on Media Reform: “Democracy Only Works When Ordinary People Claim It as Their Own”

http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2008/june/video/dnB20080609a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=10:43

BILL MOYERS: The media reform movement was actually born on my show five years ago when Bob McChesney and John Nichols appeared to talk about their new book, Our Media, Not Theirs. Bob was—Bob and John were so insightful, so compelling, so fair, so intense, they just melted the screen, and our email boards and our phones at our office lighted up. Pat Mitchell, the president of PBS, called me the next day and said, “I want a hundred copies of that book to send to every member of the PBS board and others.” Editors from all over the country called and said, “That’s exactly what’s happening to our work here at our local places.”


We knew we had to do something about it. And Bob and John moved into action. The result was, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy was behind them. Many of you—many other foundations came in. And as a result of that, the media reform movement today has become what Richard Landry of the Independent Press Association calls one of the most significant citizens’ movement to a merge in this new century, a movement to challenge the stranglehold of mega media corporations over our press and to build alterative and independent sources of news and information that people can trust.


Here we are again, and our numbers are growing. We were 1,700 in Madison four years ago, 2,500 in St. Louis a year later, 3,200 in Memphis last year, and now here in St. Paul we’re 3,500 and counting. That’s amazing.


By the way, one we’re pleased to count is my son, William Cope Moyers. Some of you know him. He’s become a national spokesman for the treatment and recovery movement. He’s the vice president of the Hazelden Foundation, that remarkable treatment and recovery center here in Minnesota, which is a recovering states. His book about our family’s experiences in his long ordeal of combating this disease of addiction—his book is called Broken—became a bestseller last year. And his message is the same one that the media reform message proclaims so consistently, that nothing is ever broken that can’t be fixed if enough people are committed. You—by the way, he’s going to come and help me sign my books after this is over. I’ve already helped him sign his.


http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/9/moyers

Five years to get here.