[Peace] Listen to Bill Moyers' historic speech

[Robert W. McChesney]

Dear Media Reformer:

In an historic speech on Sunday, legendary television journalist Bill Moyers blasted Kenneth Tomlinson of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) for launching a partisan witch hunt at PBS and called for a series of town hall meetings across the country.

"I simply never imagined that any CPB chairman, Democrat or Republican, would cross the line from resisting White House pressure to carrying it out for the White House," Moyers told a packed room at the National Conference for Media Reform. "And that's what Kenneth Tomlinson has been doing."

You can now watch or listen to Moyers' entire speech on the Free Press Web site:

An audio recording can be downloaded at: http://www.freepress.net/conference/audio05/moyers.mp3

Or you can watch the video at: http://www.freepress.net/conference/audio05/freepress-closing40515.mov

Transcript online (as soon as it's available) at http://www.freepress.net/conference.

In his first public statement since the controversy at PBS emerged, Moyers endorsed a call by media reform groups for a series of town hall meetings nationwide so that Americans can speak directly to station managers and policymakers about what they want and expect from public broadcasting.

More than 50,000 Americans have already signed the Free Press petition calling on Kenneth Tomlinson to resign and demanding that the public be put back into PBS.

Please add your name to the petition by clicking http://www.freepress.net/action/pbs.

"That great mob that is democracy is rarely heard, and that's not just the fault of the current residents of the White House and Capitol," Moyers said. "There is a great chasm between those of us in the business and those who depend on TV and radio as their window to the world. We treat them too much like audiences and not enough like citizens. They are invited to look through the window, but too infrequently to participate and make public broadcasting public."

Please support Bill Moyers, public broadcasting, quality journalism and democracy by signing the petition and passing along this message to everyone you know.

Onward, 

Robert W. McChesney
Free Press
www.freepress.net 

P.S. The conference was a rousing success. Visit www.freepress.net/conference for audio and video recordings of the sessions, new episodes of "Media Minutes" and news reports. New content is being added daily.
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