well i'm john berman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture award winning journalist and television host build morning joins me for the first half hour in our conversations with great minds the stuff to discuss his extraordinary life politics and media plus it's been four days since the country hit the debt ceiling so will we or the foreign creditors be lining up on the steps of the capitol get their money back and talk about rewriting history republicans and try to write walsh the presidencies of

harry truman and dwight eisenhower set the record straight and stealing to. organize conversations of the great minds i'm joined by an icon of television journalism his resume includes being a founding organizer of the peace corps a press secretary for president lyndon johnson decades of reporting for both print and television outlets the most famous project was bill moyers journal weekly television show that was one of the highest rated public affairs programs around public television in two thousand and seven to two thousand and ten as many as two million viewers tuned in to hear what he had to say every single week and his accomplishments have not gone unnoticed as a recipient of more than thirty emmy awards and nine peabody awards as well as a slew of other arms and this month he released his latest book bill moyers journal

the conversation continues. you can when he has something to say listen that's why i am honored to be joined from new york tonight by none other than bill moyers bill welcome. thank you my pleasure can imagine being anywhere else right now. that's very kind of you you're one of those rare people who have impacted both media and politics it's a remarkable life that you've lived an accomplished during an interview with tab a smiley a week or so ago you said television isn't rural enough what did you mean by that and how when why did the word liberal the word the george washington was so fond of become a slur. well i'd actually didn't use the word liberal somebody interpreted what i said as their call for television to be public broadcasting to be more liberal with i think that's probably the logical conclusion of what i said was that we need a greater diversity of voices in television including public television we have far

too many establishment voices elite voices the voices of elite journalist elite experts we don't have enough voices that come outside from outside of the senses because the consensus is a real change ideas come from the margins in and and press all of us to reconsider our conventional wisdom and what i was saying is we need fewer voices of corporate representatives more voices of working people we need fewer abortions of elite journalism and more voices of citizen journalists and if that's liberal then i plead guilty because that means we're open to diversity of opinion conflicts of ideas and to a great plurality of the put in the public dialogue that's what i mean about it. there are many economists for example talk with james k. galbraith two weeks ago on this program who was interviewed in your new book who are prince pessimistic about the economic future of this country because the

fundamentals the economic fundamentals haven't shifted back to where they were before the reagan revolution if you agree with that thesis to what extent do you think that the media has played a role in turning politics into sports and keeping the public on informed. well the fact that that politics has become a support is because a lot of the only lookers through the media like to be entertained and amuse they like the blood and gore as the romans did in the coliseum and no way there's very little serious alternative economic information in the mainstream media you know we have lost seven million jobs since two thousand and eight since the great collapse of two thousand and eight and james galbraith talks about this very vividly and in my new book as you said seven million jobs what is washington debating right now what's the mainstream mirah is the mainstream media holding up that debate they're debating deficits they're debating interest they're debating issues that have

nothing to do with people who are out there who are out of were who are chronically unemployed who are struggling to keep their head above water that's why the carnival aspect of the press is a great travesty of what we need to be talking about in this country apropos of that when when you started your career most of the news media americans consume from t.v. to newspapers magazines radio were locally owned by thousands of companies and individuals and now it's been baggett in as chronicled in his book in the various editions of his books actually are that book the media monopoly over the last decade or two about ninety percent of all the news media now that americans consume is owned or created by five giant corporations what are your observations on those years of transition and your thoughts on where we'll go from here. where were you go from here depends upon the public supporting alternative independent journalists

like like you tom hartman if maybe for give a kind of work that i have done in public broadcasting. corporate journalist tend to be. tend to be tethered to the value system of the corporations they serve and that's really to perpetuate the old power. we've seen as you said an enormous concentration of media power in the last twenty five years in particular and as that is happened as corporations have come to have a vested interest in the worksheet and in washington politics subsidies tax breaks special favors the journalists have tended not consciously but unconsciously to buy into those values and to assume a way to censor themselves so that they're not really telling the story and look at what n.b.c. did not do when n.b.c. when g.e. sold in b.c. to comcast it was very little coverage of this new merger of two corporate go i asked own in b c that's an example of how the media censors itself in response to

the perceived values of the corporate giants they work for and it has meant that more and more they try to entertain us the biggest change i think in the press in my time has been to look out and see a country of consumers not a country of citizens you can tell a lot about a producer a journalist a correspondent an editor if you think he or she sees an audience of consumers out there to be sold something orus an audience of citizens to be informed and the big change in my has been to shift the media's attention the media's focus from a society of. citizens to a society of consumers entertainment problem as it were you you in your book one of the questions that you often ask yes i've noticed this over the years is how

they reacted to that and i'm curious how you've reacted to this change over the years and for example have you ever looked at the state of the nation or its media and felt to spare or are these challenges and changes actually invigorating to you you see them as it's as you know. a sort of pick up or whatever your corporate metaphor would be. i try to resist. the disease of despair i mean i can understand why so many people and your so many people feel despair at the moment are our democracy is dysfunctional we no longer have a government of by and for the people representative democracy we have government by plutocracy who talk to see me the rule of the rich for the rich brother rich and that's what we have to talk or see has one purpose which is to protect wealth and that's what we're seeing in the supreme court about what you've written so eloquently over the years and that's what we're seeing in our democracy i don't

feel despair because i can't i can't function if i do i practice but what the political scientists graham ski call the pessimism of the mud and the optimism of the will by that he made it you see the world as it is and we journalists have to see the world without rose colored glasses we have to see the reality no matter how brutal it is but at the same time if you succumb to that too bad pessimism the nothing good ever happens so i wake up every morning trying to imagine a more confident future and been trying that day to do something about it that's what keeps me that's my antidote to despair and cynicism thought. the message of my book is that democracy is in trouble the mako see it america has been a series of narrow scapes and we may be running out of luck because as i said representative government is threatened at this moment by wealth power and

corporate conglomerated interest but we can't give up the great progressive reformer of the last in the early part of the last if you robert the fall it's the that the mocker see is a life of struggle and frederick douglass said power never concedes anything without a struggle so each of us in our own way every day have to do something to fight the propaganda this is still a mentality and the pornography of politics do you even said that you just said that basically this is no longer a democracy it's a witch ocracy it seems to me that we're not fully into that new frame but we're awful awful close to it hi how would you propose or what have you seen as viable ways to break the motion in that direction toward total basically oligarchy in the

united states. and well i would expect it to mars. i think just as we've witnessed an arab uprising in the middle east we need american uprising we saw a hint of it in wisconsin in opposition to the right wing idiology being enclosed by the state legislature governed by but by conservatives and it and the right wing government government and we saw people standing up and and demanding more dignity and and the protection of their interests against the power of that state and all over the country i see examples of it i just met yesterday with a wonderful woman donna smith who works for the california nurses association who are fighting for medicare for all she has given up she was on her way from new york to washington to take part in a public peaceful nonviolent protest against the health interests that are still trying to undermine the reform the health reform of last year there's

a remarkable young man you should have on your show. who twenty three years old from mississippi unemployed journalists who are year out of morehouse has decided that that he can't just sit by and do four jobs trying to make ends meet he's out now organizing what's called us uncut two through lobbied the government and the banks for the banks to pay their fair share of taxes all over the country they get no mainstream media they get no mainstream a tip no no attention from the mainstream media but all over the country people are fighting standing up we just have to make sure they get they get some some of the the attention that they deserve from the media that's the only thing i know organized people is the only answer to organize money so you got to look around find a group that's working in the interest that that you think are important for the public good in this country join it and get up to morrow morning in and make

a fight of it but the. we've had the fellow from us on and the d.c. representative actually on the program a couple of times and i've had a moment i'll give you those were very great and they're based on the uncut movement that started in the u.k. which was you know stop the cots the cameron administrations bring it in and in the u.k. that actually gets a lot of publicity because the because the b.b.c. and what not. yet either this morning or yesterday's the front page of the washington post was this giant photo of as i recall it was spain and it was like a hundreds of thousands of people protesting the cuts that they're talking about these i.m.f. austerity cuts and things that may be coming down the road and yet there was no story it was just a pretty photo. how how is it that europe has vibrant journalism and we have infotainment. i don't know b. answer to that question except that there's

a record of independent journalism in in europe but it hasn't been corporate it has been bought by by huge conglomerations i mean some of that exists of course but there's also a tradition since world war two of europeans fighting for social democracy for a civil society that looks out to be interest and values of working people that we don't have in this country for thirty years in america since the reagan administration there's been a steady right wing corporate right wing a soul own the work the rights of working people you know there's a story in the times the other day about those manufacturing jobs coming back to the midwest in this country but the jobs that are being created our pay one third of the jobs that were sent overseas paid so they have that history of theirs are our press loves dissent when it's abroad but if you but they don't like to sit at home but they're made uncomfortable about it by the mainstream press because if

that dissent succeeds it's the threat threat to the corporations for whom they work and to the relationship between the corporate and the corporate powers in the state powers that represent this this sort of tacit consensual seduction that is going on in this country of the rights and interests of working people very well said we're going to take a quick break and when we come back i'd like to get into. some of the back of the sixty's for a moment if we could and some more of the things that are in your book we'll continue our conversations of the great minds of the world winning journalist bill moyers after a break. for . fifty. five. ft.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realized everything you saw. i'm sorry is a big. part of their conversations with great minds i'm speaking with an american icon bill moyers his latest book is titled bill moyers journal the conversation continues of the welcome back you helped create the peace corps in one thousand nine hundred

eighty one i'm wondering what that time was like and what did you and your compatriots have in mind for that institution and its impact on america in the world and further what might we learn now from those pretty heady times back then i remember the sixty's as a any time anyway. well the early part of the sixty's was a time of great idealism it was permissible to be idealistic that's when the civil rights movement in the south begin with the freedom riders of fifty years ago this very year began to really awaken the conscience of the country to what had been the brutal treatment for so long of of black americans i also on another front in another part of the country there was this beginning to believe that there was a moral alternative to war and that you to serve your country you didn't have to put on a uniform and go off and kill somebody you could actually go out in the peace corps

and live in the neighborhoods in the villages of the world's emerging countries and provide a human service of personal contact representing america in the most basic the livery of of service and so i remember standing in the cold on january twenty first of nine hundred sixty one listening to john f. kennedy whose campaign i had served and listening to the new president the newly inaugurated president make that famous summons ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country and feeling that i wanted to be a part of a movement that expressed the affirmative side of the american experience so i for nagel my way to work for the peace corps i was one of the founding organizers as you said became and stephanie director in our mission was to show americans that there was a new way of being in the world but in fact you had two passports one stamped united states citizen and the other stamp citizen of the world that was the

mission of the peace corps it is still important today to remember with humility and with gratitude that that there's a different way from being in the in the world as an american in straggler and to be. stick that is possible to live side by side with the world we share and grow together toward a more understanding a greater understanding of each other and say that was the mission of the peace corps what. what has changed and when did it change when did that stop being the way that we saw ourselves as americans and and project ourselves out into the world . i think the more militaristic our foreign policy has become over the years and you know we've had almost no year without real peace in the world in the last twenty five years old i always been some military action of one kind or another

with the increasing militarization of american society and particularly with the trav it's a tragedy of nine eleven we tended not to think of alternatives to national security being being the peace corps and. economic development and person to person relationships like the peace corps represented and tend to think of it in terms of you know surveillance all of the methods in the military the the special forces and all of that that we have been fighting two wars now for ten years after nine eleven the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives abroad and of american soldiers and the trillions of dollars and in that kind of violent world in which huge forces of military forces or lose it's hard to think of one on one relationships between american

citizens going abroad in the peace corps and the budget of the peace corps has been consistently cut because it doesn't have the aura that it wants to i've seen a lot of peace corps volunteers in the last few years they still are doing a terrific job out there very personally in the essential american values of friendship and openness and collaboration so it's still there thank goodness it hasn't disappeared even though there are far fewer volunteers than there were even twenty years ago. moving a little farther into the sixty's you were lyndon johnson's press secretary is from sixty five to sixty seven in the white house and if the reports that i've read are correct in october of sixty seven you told an audience in cambridge a lyndon johnson saw the war in vietnam as his major legacy and as a result was insisting on victory at all costs even in the face of opposition in your opinion is president obama now doing the same thing in afghanistan. well i

think he's made the same mistake that in the johnson made in thinking that by escalating the number of troops he could find a kind of ultimately triumph here the tragedy of the american presidency is that as we go to war and every life that's lost every ounce of blood that still the president because more and more invested in quote victory because you don't want to you don't want to have to send a message to the parents of those middle or women who died there that it was in vain so that's the paradox of escalation which is you had to you're bound to have more casualties in those casualties are almost bound to cause you to resolve further to win the victory that is usually elusive you know the great another great tragedy of the american presidency particularly a progressive presidency is that this is a continuing cycle woodrow wilson elected in one nine hundred twelve as

a very progressive. politician within two years was within a few years was taking us to war in in europe dr franklin roosevelt dr when the dr new deal became pranking those of dr when the war after world war two happened harry truman a lot of progress there president. wrote round up taking us to war in korea and his domestic programs were consumed by by by the war lyndon johnson sitting on a knife by my first job was not his press secretary i was responsible for much of the domestic policy civil rights environmental message economic policy and all of that and suddenly with the escalation of the war in vietnam in one thousand nine hundred eighty five i saw all those hopeful possibilities consumed by. the growing ravenous demands of of the military for more and more money and more

and more troops. lysol our hopes for bringing about a great society disappeared of a quark are of vietnam it was a very sad time a great time costly for those who lost their lives both americans and vietnam vietnamese but it also represented a turning away from the possibilities of building a better society at home. if. very well said if we could move back to the to the media for a second you're the bush appointed kind of thomas as the chairman of the corp of a broadcast and apparently he was a rather regular critic of you on p.b.s. you said there are times when i was threatened by radio stations to tone it down and european are we and actually not even we is is the corporation for public broadcasting in general moving away from programming in the public interest. but i

don't see any evidence of that yet the is corporation for you know there are good republicans and there are dangers republicans as there are good democrats and and bad to make arrests in the present president of the corporation for public broadcasting pat harrison is a public minded public spirited republican and i think she is really trying to fulfill public broadcasting's mission of greater diversity more service of. public interest trying to protect the independence of public broadcasting her predecessor of thomas that was a raw wing operative he was a lady a logical kindred spirit of karl rove and i never will forget the day that one of the trustees of the corporation for public broadcasting called me on the phone and said i just heard kenneth thomas and he was there in the chairman of the corporation for public broadcasting say i'm here to get rid of bill moyers

that's that's not what pat harrison would we would do it i don't know or i just happen to have not sure a track record in playing she is doing a good job but but tom this is an old story in the ninety's early nine hundred seventy s. president nixon and his his his a propagandist pat buchanan tried to undermine public broadcasting try. to get me off the air tried to get robin make me feel off the air try to get sandy but okkar off the air not because we were liberals but because we were reporting what they didn't want reported the alternative to the official white house next only in view of reality robert though who was then senator from kansas and senate minority leader tried in the late one nine hundred eighty s. to defund public broadcasting going along comes newt gingrich the late newt gingrich in one thousand nine hundred eighty three and for trying to defund public

broadcasting and then you had george w. bush and kill thomas and his henchmen and the corporation for public broadcasting trying to do the same first of all they don't believe in public funding of of the media as a matter of principle but secondly more importantly they do not believe there should be truth tellers who are counted rate the official view of reality do not like independent journalism let me repeat that is not true of the present president of the corporation for public broadcasting or the present president of p.b.s. paula kerger i believe they are committed to public television in the interest of the and informed american public unfortunately for seven straight years public broadcasting's public television's revenue has been flat and the greatest challenge facing public television at the moment is in fact diminishing resources to do the

kind of quality reporting and the kind of of great programming that the american people deserve. bill moyers thanks so much for being with us here tonight it's better than ours keep it up tom you're. poor the voice out there in the independent world of broadcasting thank you thank you very much sir you can watch. this conversation again as well as other conversations with great minds at our website conversations with great minds dot com coming up the deputy editor for the daily caller jamie weinstein writer for the weekly standard gambit in your help or at a radio host joe madison all join me after the break for tonight's weekly rumble.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here. i think from a beautiful sunday well. we never government says there's good to say get ready because our freedoms. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so so sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else if you're.