and. into that only it was very clear that if you don't work to bring just the sort of. health care for me right you know what my government should do if you want to know why i think. i would characterize obama as a charismatic. of american exceptionalism. few.

welcome back to the big picture lucy calif now filling in for tom hartman now we continue with another edition of tom's conversations with great minds segments tom recently sat down with bill moyers of course a journalistic icon to look back on his distinguished career and to discuss the current state of our nation's news media take a look. for

tonight's conversations the great minds are joined by an icon of television journalism as a 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 as most famous project was bill moyers journal that weekly television show that was one of the highest rated public affairs programs that run television between two thousand and seven and 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 the recipient of more than thirty emmy awards and nine peabody awards as well as a slew of other honors and this month he released his latest book bill moyers journal the conversation continues because when he has something to say take a listen that's why i'm honored to be joined from new york tonight by none other than bill moyers bill welcome but thank you to my pleasure can't imagine being

anywhere else right now. and 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 have a smiley a week or so ago you say television isn't rural enough what did you mean by that and how and why did the word liberal the word the george washington was so fond of become a slur. i actually didn't use the word liberal somebody interpreted what i said it to call for a prohibition to be broadcast and to be more liberal with probably a logical conclusion what i said was that we needed greater diversity of voices in television polluting public television we have far too many establishment bourses elite voices the voices of the lead journalists to lead experts we don't have enough the worst. does it come outside from outside of a sense of the consensus be

a real change ideas come from the margins and and press all of us to reconsider our conventional wisdom and what i was saying is we need fewer voices of corporate representatives move forces of working people we need fewer abortions of elite journalism and move forces of citizen journalists and if that's liberal then i plead guilty because that means we're open to diversity of opinion conflicts of the is and to the great plurality of the pope in the public that's what i mean by that but. there are many economists for example talk with james k. god with two weeks ago on this program who was interviewed in your new book who are prince has a mistake 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 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 there's very little serious alternative economic information in the mainstream media and 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 baiting right now what's the mainstream. is the mainstream media holding up to 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 work 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 it apropos of that when when you started your career most of the news media americans consume from t.v. to newspapers maggoty you were locally owned by thousands of companies and individuals and now as ben daggett can 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 we're a go from here depends upon the public supporting alternative independent journalists like like you tom hartman if maybe for a 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 the pressure at the old power we've seen as you said it enormous concentration of media power in the last twenty five years in particular and as that is happen as corporations have come to have a vested interest in the washington 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 they're not really telling the story and look at what n.b.c. did not do. in the second g.e. so in b.c. to comcast it was very little coverage of this new merger of two corporate go i os 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. that's the biggest change i think in the press and has been

to look out and see a country of consumers not a country of citizens you can tell a lot about a producer or journalist a correspondent. if you think he or she sees an audience of consumers out there to be sold something or. an audience of citizens to be informed and the big change in what has been the shift the media's attention the media's focus from a society of citizens to a society of consumers and for taman problem as it were you you in your book one of the questions that you often ask and 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 despair or are these challenges and changes actually invigorating you see

them as it's as you know. a sort of take up or whatever the appropriate metaphor would be. i try to resist. the disease of this prayer but i can understand why so many pete 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 got. to talk or see means the rule of the rich for the rich by the 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 which 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 right now at the italian political scientists gramsci call the pessimism of the in the on. because i'm 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 and. that through that 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 to despair and so this is. the message of my book is that democracy is in trouble democracy in america has been a series of narrow escapes 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 of the early part of the last century robert with follett said

that the mockery 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 and to do something to fight the propaganda the silliman tallaght the and the pornography of politics do you have said that you just said that basically this is no longer a democracy it's a clear talker see 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 of the united states. and expect a democracy. i think just as we witness an arab uprising in the middle east we need an american uprising we saw a hint of a. in wisconsin in opposition to the right wing ideology being imposed by the

state legislature governed by but by conservatives and and iraq we govern the government and we saw all people standing up and and demanding more dignity and and the protection of their interests against the power of of that state and all over the country i see examples of it i just met yesterday with a wonderful woman named 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 health reform of last year there's a remarkable young man you should have on your show. twenty three years ago 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 to lobby 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've 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 and make a fight of it but the we we've had the fellow from us on and the d.c. represented actually on a program a couple of times i've had a moment where all the interest as well great. yeah great and they're based on the

uncut movement the start of the u.k. which was stop the cuts that cameron the administration's bringing 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 is the front page of the washington post was this giant photo of as i recall was spain and it was like hundreds of thousands of people protesting the cuts that they're talking about is i am i thought spirity 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. question except that there's a record of independent journalism in in europe it hasn't been corporate it has been ball by huge global racism and some of that exist of course but there's also a tradition since world war two of europeans fighting for social democracy for

a civil society that looks after the 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 sole hole in the work the rights of working people and 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 or pay one third of the jobs that were sent overseas so they have a history of this are our press loves to say it when it's abroad but if you but they don't like this in a home 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 call. powers in the state

primaries that represented this sort of passage consensual seduction that is growing all over 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 that back in the sixty's for a moment if we could and some more of the of the things that are in your book will continue our conversations of the great minds of the world winning journalist bill moyers after the break. for. a. few.

more than that 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 bill what about you you helped create the peace corps in one nine hundred sixty one and wonder what that time was like and what did you and your compatriots have in mind for that institution and its impact on american 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 in a way. 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 fear year begin to really awaken the conscience of the country. what had been the

brutal treatment for so long of of black americans out so on a whole 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 or 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 a personal contact representing america in the most basic delivery of of service and so i remember standing in the cold on january twenty first at 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 i asked 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 can

finagle my way to work for the peace corps i was one of the founding organizers as you said became its deputy director and our mission was to show americans that there was a new way of being in the world but in effect you had two passports one stamped united states citizen and the other stamped 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 swagger and a big stick that it's possible to live side by side with the world share and grow together toward a more understanding a greater understanding of each other he said that was the mission of the free of the peace corps what. have we. what has changed and when did it change when did

that stop being the way that we saw ourselves as americans and and and project ourselves out into the world. i think the more militaristically our foreign policy has become over the years and you know we've had almost no year without with real peace in the world in the last twenty five years old 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've we've tended not to think of alternatives to national security being being the peace corps and the. economic development and person to person relationships like a peace corps represented and tend to think of it in terms of you know surveillance all the methods and the military the the special forces and all of that that we've

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 of the one relationships between american citizens going abroad in the peace corps and the budget of the peace corps has been consistently cut because that it doesn't have the r.-a that it once did i have seen a lot of peace corps volunteers in the last few years they still are doing a terrific job out there versus in the 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 they were even twenty years ago but we 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 the 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 public opposition in your opinion is president obama now doing the same thing in afghanistan. but i think he's made the same mistake that in the johnson made in thinking that escalating the number of troops he could find a he could ultimately triumph there the tragedy of the american presidency is that as we go to war and every life that's a lot of blood that spill the president becomes 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 made it we're going to die there that it was in vain so that's the paradox of escalation which is you do to your bound to have more

casualties in those casualties are almost bound to cause you to resolve to win the victory that is usually elusive you know the great another great tragedy of the american presidency particularly of progressive presidents is that this is a continuing cycle woodrow wilson of elected in one thousand twelve is a very progressive. politician within two years was within a few years was taking us to war in in europe franklin roosevelt doctor when the doctor new deal became franklin roosevelt dr when the war after world war two happened harry truman thought a progressive president. wound up taking us to war in korea and his domestic programs were consumed. by by the war and then in johnson city. 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 sixty i saw all those hopeful possibilities consumed by it by growing ravenous the may ends of the military for more and more money and more and more troops and i saw all our hopes for about our great society disappeared of the quagmire of vietnam it was a very sad time a great time. for those who lost their lives both americans and the enemies but it also represented a turning away from the possibilities of building a better society at home. if. you very well said if we could move back. to the media for a second you were the bush appointed. as the chairman of the corporation public

broadcast and apparently he was a 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 your pain are we and actually not even we is is the corporation public broadcasting in general moving away from programming in the public interest. well i don't see any evidence of that yet the news corp there are good republicans and there are dangers republicans as there are good democrats and and bad democrats and the president president of the corporation for public broadcasting that harrison is a public minded public spirited republican and i think she is really trying to fulfill the public broadcasting's mission of greater diversity more service of. the public interest trying to protect the independence of public broadcasting her predecessor kind of columnist there was a right wing operative he. he was

a radiological 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 thomason who was then the chairman of the corporation for public broadcasting say i'm here to get rid of bill warriors that's that's not what pat harrison would we do not oh no or i just happen to have watched her track record and think she is doing a good job but this is an old story in the ninety early nine hundred seventy s. president nixon and his and his his a propagandist pat buchanan tried to undermine public broadcasting tried to get me off the air tried to get. robert macneil off the air tried to get sandy that ochre off the air now because we were liberals were because we were reporting what they didn't want reported to the official white house next only in view of reality

robert doe who was then senator from kansas and senate minority leader tried in the late one nine hundred eighty s. to defund public broadcasting then along comes newt gingrich the late newt gingrich in nineteen ninety three and for trying to defund public broadcasting and then you had george w. bush and. thomas and his henchmen at the corporation for public broadcasting trying to do the same first of all they don't believe in public funding of of media as a matter of principle but secondly more importantly they do not believe there should be truth tellers who are countering 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 peace. yes

paula kerger i believe you're committed to public television in the interest of the informed american public unfortunately for seven straight years public broadcasting's probably television's revenue has been flat and the greatest challenge facing public television at the moment is in fight diminishing resources to do the kind of quality reporting and the kind of job of great programming that the american people deserve. bill moyers thanks so much for being with us or it's been a lawyer speak he put up on your port of voice out there in the independent world of broadcasting thank you thanks very much for our all that is it on the big picture this evening for more information on the stories that we cover these visit our website at tom hartman dot com and artie dot com you can also check out our review to page into dot com class the big picture artie peter intil dot com slash

tom hartman and this entire show as always is available as a free podcast on i tunes that forces tom always says don't forget our democracy begins with you get out there get active in tag you're it.