Moyers Retirement NYT: Where is there anyone like him up and coming?...

"The first thing that President Bush did when he came into office was to try and deny access to his father's presidential papers," Mr. Moyers, 70, said in a telephone interview earlier this week from his Manhattan office. "The attacks of 9/11 have given them a cover and a rationale to accelerate what has been an ambitious plan to keep the workings of government secret.

(snip)

In an age of television shouters, Mr. Moyers is an anomaly. His delivery is measured and the rhetoric temperate. Yet he used the tools of the documentarian to wield a velvet sledgehammer, bludgeoning corporate polluters and government ne'er-do-wells with precision and grace. His tendentiousness in choice of targets has earned him the fealty of public-television audiences and the enmity of conservative observers.

FrontPageMagazine.com, a conservative Web site, published a detailed retrospective earlier this month on Mr. Moyers, describing him as a "sweater-wearing pundit who delivered socialist and neo-Marxist propaganda with a soft Texas accent."

And Mr. Moyers has done nothing to endear himself further as he heads for the exit, telling anyone who will listen that "the conservative press is a propaganda wing of the current administration and the mainstream press thinks only of the bottom line."

(snip)

"I learned the hard way an old lesson that the greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it," he said. "Now we have those megamedia companies that won't speak truth to power and an ideological media that willingly lies for power. Scary!"

In the uninflected medium of e-mail Mr. Moyers's departing exclamation, not couched in his just-us-folks Texas delivery, comes through loud and clear.


Who are we left with?

We are left with the Brent Bozells of the world, quoted in the article: "I think that if Bill Moyers is trying to go out as the Michael Moore of television, he ought to be congratulated, because he has succeeded," he said. "I think he has gone off the deep end."

link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/arts/television/17moye.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=print&position=

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