"Bill Moyers was an inspiration for much of my writing and my many interviews of historians and other writers, scholars, reporters and artists." - Robin Lindley
On August 22, 2011, Robin Lindley interviewed the renowned Journalist Bill Moyers. During these uncertain, and, in many ways, dark times, Bill Moyers' insight into our American Democracy is worthy of contemplation. Here now are excerpts from the interview. Scroll below to access the link to read the interview in its entirety on the History News Network.
Bill Moyers has devoted his career to educating, informing and inspiring the American public while leading a national conversation with the conviction that “the gravediggers of democracy will not have the last word.” He is perhaps best known for his years of groundbreaking journalism on television, which has earned him lifetime achievement Emmy and Peabody Awards, more than thirty individual Emmy Awards and nine Peabody Awards, and virtually every other major television journalism prize, including the Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Gold Baton Award, and a George Polk Career Award for contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting.
Mr. Moyers’s work is fueled by a deep knowledge of history, a passion for justice and public service, a profound concern for his fellow citizens, a love of language, and an appreciation of the ethical underpinnings of the issues he tackles. His deft storytelling is strengthened by his prodigious research and erudition so that he can provide the context and analysis that is sadly lacking in much of what passes for journalism now. And, as noted in one of the many accolades about his work, Mr. Moyers has dared to imagine that members of his audience are willing to think and to learn.
When the late Molly Ivins suggested that Mr. Moyers run for president in 2008, she identified some of the unique qualities that have earned him broad respect. She wrote, “He opens minds—he doesn’t scare people. He includes people in, not out. And he sees through the dark search for political advantage to the clear ground of the Founders. He listens and he respects others.”
Mr. Moyers, now 77, continues to lend his unique voice to the national conversation and, inevitably, to speak truth to power—despite his ostensible retirement. In his new book, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues (The New Press), he presents over forty engaging interviews from the 2007 to 2010 seasons of his highly-rated public affairs program. From the waning days of the George W. Bush administration through the onset of the Obama era, Mr. Moyers talked with leading activists, political thinkers, scientists, artists, writers and scholars including television satirist Jon Stewart, historian Howard Zinn, novelists Louise Erdrich and John Grisham, anthropologist and activist Jane Goodall, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, actor-author John Lithgow, economist James K. Galbraith, scientist E.O. Wilson, poets W.S. Merwin and Nikki Giovanni, and many more. The topics ranged from democracy, justice, poverty, race, war, and predatory capitalism to religion, science and creativity. The book includes new introductions that provide readers with historical context and background for each conversation.
As well as sharing history, Mr. Moyers has been a part of our national story. He was born in Oklahoma in 1934 and raised in Texas. At age 16, he worked as a cub reporter for the Marshall News Messenger. He is a graduate of the University of Texas and recipient of its Distinguished Alumnus Award. He also became an ordained a minister in 1954 and later earned a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Mr. Moyers worked as an aide to then Senator Lyndon B. Johnson during the 1960 presidential campaign. He was a founder of the Peace Corps in the Kennedy Administration, and ultimately became the deputy director. He was special assistant to President Johnson from 1963 to 1967, including two years as White House press secretary. He was instrumental in developing many of the innovative anti-poverty and civil rights measures that came out of the LBJ’s Great Society. Later, he was named “the best White House Press Secretary ever” by the American Journalism Review.
After leaving the White House, Mr. Moyers became the publisher of Newsday on Long Island, New York. He began work with the Public Broadcasting System in 1971 with the first Bill Moyers Journal series. His programs ranged far beyond the politics of the day with enlightening discussions of the arts, ethics, philosophy and spirituality. In the early 1980s, he interviewed artists, performers and leading thinkers in his innovative series Creativity, and later he produced and hosted several programs focusing on American poets. With his long-time friend, mentor, and collaborator, the historian Bernard Weisberger, he created the acclaimed series A Walk Through the Twentieth Century.
In 1986, Mr. Moyers resigned as Senior News Analyst for the CBS Evening News and Senior Correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports to form his own independent production company, Public Affairs Television. With his wife and creative partner Judith Davidson Moyers he has produced a broad spectrum of programs, including series such as Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home; Genesis: A Living Conversation; Healing and the Mind; Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth; What Can We Do About Violence? On Our Own Times: Moyers on Death and Dying; and Faith and Reason; NOW with Bill Moyers; and Bill Moyers Journal.
Mr. Moyers’s books include works based on those documentary series as well as Listening to America, A World of Ideas I and II, The Language of Life, Fooling with Words, Moyers on America and Moyers on Democracy. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Organization of American Historians. He lives with his wife Judith in New York City.
Mr. Moyers recently agreed to an exclusive interview for the History News Network. He responded by email to a series of questions about his new book, his career, his brushes with history, his writing process, his “retirement,” and more. Mr. Moyers was candid and very timely in his responses to my questions. In several exchanges over the past two weeks here is what our interview elicited.
Robin Lindley: You are a masterful interviewer and—unlike many journalists today—always scrupulous about providing historical context for each interview subject, as evidenced in your new book. How do you choose interview subjects and prepare for interviews?
Bill Moyers: Thanks for the compliment. Truth is, I’m okay at interviewing but better at editing. I prefer a long conversation that I then trim to essentials. It’s the closest I ever get as a journalist to craftsmanship. Remember Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth? Those six broadcasts came from 26 rambling hours of conversation during which I got lost more than once. I enjoyed the lengthy sessions with him but they would have been incomprehensible to anyone not steeped in the lingo of mythology. By leaving the excess, including much of the lingo, on the cutting room floor—well, it was a cutting room floor before digital editing came along—we got to the essence of his ideas, to the stories, and the series became one of the most popular ever on public television.
There’s a figure in every stone, if only the sculptor can pare away the excess, right? Well, there’s a shape in every conversation. You carve a little, step back and look at it, then take the scalpel and carve again until—eureka! That’s the part of my work I most enjoy. Over all these years, I’m pleased to say, not a single guest has complained about the result. Now I’m jealous of my peers who do live interviews so well. But I’m not nimble on the high wire with the clock ticking. I need to listen at length, then sit with my team and edit as faithfully as possible until we find the inner arc of the experience.
How do I choose my guests? By preparation, intuition, and convergence. I read widely—magazines of every stripe. By midnight my bedside is strewn with clippings from the stack on the floor. There are books in various stages of reading all over the place—some by my chair, some on the floor, a couple on my desk, always a paperback at the ready if there’s a traffic jam or the train is slow. I scour Web sites.
Newspapers are my daily bread. I started as a cub reporter on my local paper. The publisher paid me extra to help him prepare a widely-circulated newsletter called “News Tips”—gleanings from many sources—so it became a habit for me to read and rip. Now I read six or seven papers a day—at least two from abroad, two or three big ones here at home, as well as the weekly in the small town where we retreat on the weekends. Not every story in every paper, obviously. Every newspaper is full of surprises. The article you didn’t intend to read—right next to the one you felt you must read—turns out to be the most interesting of all, and you weren’t even looking for it.
I also watch several newscasts, mainly out of habit but also because I want to know what several million other people are watching. I listen to public radio. Especially programs like “Planet Money,” ““Radio Lab,” “On Being with Krista Tippet,” “On The Media” and some of the local interview shows on our first-rate public radio station here in New York. You can’t beat these people for story telling. Their radio does for the ear what 3-D movies do for the eye. And I tune in to a right-wing radio show occasionally. Most of them use the same talking points so you don’t have to listen long to get the conservative line of the day.
As you can tell, I’m a junkie. And I write down in my little black notebooks the name of people who strike my fancy as I read and listen. Everything goes into the mix master in my head, which keeps churning while I’m sleeping. Then one day, triggered by an incident in the news or desperation against a deadline, I get a flash of insight: Time to talk to X, Y, or Z. Maybe it’s just someone I want to meet for my own continuing education. I have my own “Ah, ha” moments in every interview when I learn some things I didn’t know. That’s always a good day.
Robin Lindley: Thank you for that description of your process. You make a point of including a wide variety of voices in your book, from political commentators to teachers and poets, all who share a willingness to speak truth to power. The book begins with a delightful interview of satirist and commentator Jon Stewart. How did you decide to talk with him?
Bill Moyers: Well, as I say in the book, Mark Twain wasn’t available. Seriously, Stewart’s in the tradition of the satirists and humorists—Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Will Rogers – who take us to the truth in or behind the news and marinate it with humor so that it goes down more easily. Jon has a way of juxtaposing events to expose the absurdity of the stuffed shirts and pooh-bahs of politics and the media. I saw him do that to John McCain in 2008 when McCain came back from using our soldiers in Iraq as a photo op. Stewart just lifted McCain on his own petard, and McCain never recovered.
Robin Lindley: Your independent voice in broadcast news is sorely missed. While the mainstream press focuses on celebrity missteps or an odd homicide case, two wars rage, the middle class shrinks, jobs disappear, poverty grows, unions are eviscerated, and the rich get richer. Do you see any improvement in news coverage since the days when the press “rolled over” for Bush and Cheney, as described a few years ago by Eric Boehlert in Lapdogs?
Bill Moyers: First, there’s never been a Golden Age of journalism. But even in the tawdriest of times some world-class journalists exalt our craft. Think of the muckrakers a century or more ago: Ray Stannard Baker, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair. Lincoln Steffens. David Graham Phillips.
There’s great journalism happening today although it’s often lost in the smog of news and information that constantly rolls over us. If everyone could read the McClatchy news service, we’d have a better-informed citizenry. When the Washington press corps as a whole was swallowing and regurgitating the propaganda of the Bush administration in preparation for attacking Iraq, reporters for Knight-Ridder—the precursor to McClatchy—kept coming up with evidence to the contrary. But because Knight-Ridder didn’t have a newspaper in Washington, the reporting didn’t resonate in the echo chamber there and the policymakers could choose to ignore it.
So, yes, the herd mentality still prevails. I read that there were eight hundred journalists in Iowa for that Republican debate the other night. They swarmed all over the Ames Straw Poll like bees on a honeycomb. And what for? A faux jousting tournament that had all the lasting effect of a single drop of rain on a sandy beach. As soon as Governor Perry leaped into the race Michelle Bachmann was a relic from the past despite having won the straw poll. By the way, people had to pay $30 to vote in the straw ballot. So much for “one person, one vote.” But quite a metaphorical statement about what it takes to be heard today. For a trivial pursuit in a process that has started almost a year earlier than necessary. Suppose if, say, at least 20 percent of those journalists had spent the weekend spreading out across the state actually reporting on all those Iowans struggling to stay afloat in hard economic times with only one hand on the life raft.
The journalist Chris Hedges is a unique force today, because of his fierce independence and candor. He’s been writing about how politics is a charade aimed at making voters think the personal narrative of the candidate is the story although it never affects the operation of the corporate state. No matter which candidate wins, the money power in Washington reigns. That nails it, don’t you think?
Robin Lindley: And the role of money in our politics has been a longtime concern of yours.
Bill Moyers: Over the past three decades our politicians and their bankrollers have written and rewritten the rules of politics and the economy in ways to benefit the people at the top at the expense of everyday people. That’s the story of our time, but the mainstream press—public broadcasting included—has paid little attention to it. To do justice to that story you would have to be more than a scribe for the official players of the ruling ideology, which holds that politics is essentially about which of the two parties wins elections.
Here is the link to read the interview in its entirety.
https://www.hnn.us/article/bill-moyers-and-robin-lindley-continuing-the-conve