Social Activism

Bill Moyers’ Speech at the National Conference for Media Reform

I turned to Link TV this morning and they were showing some of the speeches from this year’s National Conference for Media Reform. I tuned in just in time to catch the end of Bill Moyers’ speech, and was so glad to hear him confirm that he is coming back to TV news. He also ended his speech with a sentiment (see the bold text below), and poem, that I felt was apropo for the beginning of the Obama campaign. The link below will take you to the transcript of the entire speech.

Bill Moyers’ Speech at the National Conference for Media Reform, Jan 12, 2007

…in April, I will be back with a new weekly series called Bill Moyers Journal, thanks to some of the funders in this room. We’ll take no money from public broadcasting because it compromises you even when you don’t intend it to, or they don’t intend it to. I hope to complement the fine work of colleagues like David Brancaccio of NOW and David Fanning of Frontline, who also go for the truth behind the news….

And in case you do get lonely, I’ll leave you with this. As my plane was circling Memphis the other day, I looked out across those vast miles of fertile soil that once were plantations, watered by the Mississippi River, and the sweat from the brow of countless men and women who had been forced to live somebody elses story. I thought about how in time, with a lot of martyrs, they rose up, one here, then two, then many, forging a great movement that awakened America’s conscience and brought us closer to the elusive but beautiful promise of the Declaration of Independence. As we made our last approach, the words of a Marge Piercy poem began to form in my head, and I remembered all over again why I was coming and why you were here:

Read the rest of the speech >>

© 2007 Life is an Ongoing Process.