It takes two to party. “Four years ago this spring the Bush administration took leave of reality and plunged our country into a war so poorly planned it soon turned into a disaster. The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn’t have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on”, reckons Bill Moyers.

The journalist, who was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2006 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, and that was defined by Bernard Timberg as “one of the chief inheritors of the Edward R. Murrow tradition of “deep-think” journalism”, has returned to PBS in April 2007 with a weekly public affairs series, the Bill Moyers Journal.

His 90-minute report called “Buying the War” premiered on Wednesday, April 25 on PBS. The documentary caused a lively debate in the United States, as he pointed out evidence that after 09/11 the media in general and conservative media in particular had a role in selling the war in Iraq.

Tom Shales, from the Washington Post, wrote that “ the edition of “Bill Moyers Journal” on PBS is one of the most gripping and important pieces of broadcast journalism so far this year, but it’s as disheartening as it is compelling” and calls it “a story of historical value that is also frighteningly rife with portents for the future and for what will pass as journalism in months and years to come.”
Editor and Publishers calls it “the most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties” and on Sirotablog is ironically posted  “to call the media’s complicity in the Iraq War a conspiracy is an insult to conspiracies, because it wasn’t hidden - as Moyers shows, it was all out there for everyone to see.”

On the other hand Bill O’Reilly, from Fox News, attacked Bill Moyers before the airing of the report, saying that “Moyers takes a special pride in denigrating FOX News and talk radio in his presentation.” He “is not objective, has a problem with the truth, and should no longer be receiving taxpayer money.” The same O’Reilly writes: “I supported the action against Saddam because the Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, William Cohen, the CIA, British intelligence, and a variety of other intelligence agencies all told me Saddam was making dangerous weapons in violation of the first Gulf War cease-fire. We did our own original reporting here. Now I based my decision on the best available information, not on any ideological belief. I was wrong in my assessment, as was everybody else. But it was an honest mistake.”

As if the role of a journalist was to make public what the politicians say and report their words, whatever they might be, and not to investigate whether their action is correct and whether they are not telling lies.

An interactive timeline highlights some of the media coverage leading up to the Iraq War. Besides newspaper coverage, it is possible to find important documents such as U.S. and U.N. reports, from President Bush’s statement at Ground Zero “…and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon” to UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, condemning British and American handling of the hunt for any possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 

To know more about Moyers’s commitment to a free and unbiased press, read his speech at the National Conference for Media Reform.

E. Delaini

Published: June 3, 2007