The Nation: The Moyers Legacy

[marmar]

The Moyers Legacy
Editorial

March 4, 2010


Even in an age of old-media uncertainty, much is still made of the transfer of network anchor and host positions. Too often the discussion is purely about personality, but there's more to it than a celebrity shuffle: the character and content of programs with rich histories and the potential for crucial contributions to civic discourse are at stake. So oceans of ink are spilled when CBS shifts the news anchor chair from Dan Rather to Bob Schieffer to Katie Couric; or when Tim Russert's Meet the Press post goes to David Gregory. Unfortunately, scant attention has been paid to the coming shift of what over the past decade has become the most significant seat in broadcast journalism--the Friday night position occsupied by Bill Moyers.

Moyers has been the most radical presence on broadcast and cable television since 2002, when the former White House press secretary, newspaper publisher, CBS and NBC commentator, bestselling author and award-winning documentarian settled into the work of producing weekly reviews not of the transitory arguments of the moment but of the great debates on the fate of the Republic. What has made Moyers, who will retire in April, such a radical presence is not his politics but his journalism.

As the host of NOW With Bill Moyers, Moyers on America and, since 2007, Bill Moyers Journal, he has provided an antidote to the blather served up by most news and public affairs programs. Never satisfied to practice stenography to power, as so many news programs do, or to moderate recitations of talking points by political hacks, Moyers refuses to treat Americans as imbeciles who need to be ideologically coddled.

Moyers has always chosen his guests with a purpose: to put new ideas, new analyses, new approaches on the table when most outlets invite talking-head insiders to narrow the range of options. So he has earned the ire of the political and corporate elites who benefit most from a constrained debate as he has cultivated an oasis for outliers who offer unbought and unbossed takes on wars of whim, executive excess, economic wrongdoing and, above all, the corruption of politics. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/editors