This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, I’m Amy Goodman.
We end this holiday special remembering the legendary journalist Bill Moyers, who died in June at the age of 91. In the 1960s, he was a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, served as press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson. In 1971, Moyers began an award-winning career as a TV broadcaster that would last over 40 years. During that time, Bill Moyers received over 30 Emmys, countless other prizes, many for his programs on PBS, also a longtime champion of public television and independent media, his death coming while the Trump administration was stripping federal funding from PBS and NPR.
In 2011, Democracy Now!’s Juan González and I interviewed Bill Moyers. He outlined his critique of the corporate media.
BILL MOYERS: The consensual seduction of the mainstream media by and with the government is one of the most dangerous toxins at work in America today. They wouldn’t see it this way, and there are exceptions, but the corruption of corporate media, corporate power and government is what makes so vital what the two of you do. I’m serious about that. You don’t have the scope of Meet the Press. I mean, look at Meet the Press. Who’s been on Meet the Press more than any other figure in Washington in the last several years? Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich, I later learned, when I was briefly at NBC as an analyst doing commentaries, controversial commentaries, actually came to the brass of NBC and GE. Newt Gingrich has had some nefarious relationship with General Electric, which is one of the huge government contractors, as well as the owner of Meet the Press. And it’s just an example of what I’m talking about. The consensual seduction of the mainstream media with power, corporate power, government power — with exceptions, I repeat — is something that, without the antidote of independent reporting and analysis that you do and others, we would be in — we would be in a dark, dark pit with no light shining on us.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back, since we’re talking about broadcasting, right back to the Johnson era and then jump back to here, which is about the founding of public broadcasting and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, especially for young people, to understand why it began and where it’s gone.
BILL MOYERS: Well, there were — believe it or not, I mean, nobody below 40 will believe this. You may not believe it, because both of you are much younger than I am. But when I was 20 years old, there were three networks: ABC, CBS and NBC. And ABC was only half a network — no news division, all of that. And so, we were dependent upon three corporate, advertising-driven, commercial networks for our information. And to his credit, Lyndon Johnson, who made his fortune, part of his fortune, by controlling the three — he had one station in Austin that had a monopoly over broadcasting the product, the content, of all three networks. I mean, that’s how he made his money, much of his money. But he really did believe — he was a teacher. He had taught poor Mexican students in the little town of Cotulla, Texas. He was a populist, from a poor part of Central Texas —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: South Texas.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, but he went to South Texas. He came from Central Texas, went to South Texas to teach in this Mexican school. And he really cared about the poor, and he cared about education. He felt there should be one channel that was free of commercials and free of commercial values, because he knew what commercial values will do to people who are reporting the news, producing content. The desire to amuse and entertain will cause us to compromise the truth.
So he — when the Carnegie Corporation and the Carnegie Commission — John Gardner had been head of the Carnegie Corporation — and they did a study of what to do about educational television in this country. The report was actually delivered to my desk when I was still at the White House. The Carnegie Commission became the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. And I wish we had it here, because the speech Lyndon Johnson made when he signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 is a great tribute to a network devoted to the life of the mind, the life of the spirit, and the diversity of American voices. He believed that only white male straight guys got on national television in those days, and he was right. And he saw the value, the changing — the changes coming in America, and he believed there should be a public media that was devoted to the diversity, the pluralism of American life, and to the highest expression of the creative and journalistic art