cognitive dissident

Bill Moyers’ address to the PBS Annual Meeting l is excellent, especially the section where Moyers laments “how corporate media pollutes the meaning of ‘fair and balanced’ with the pretense that two well-rehearsed sound bites by representatives of self-serving interests constitutes ‘analysis’ of the news:”

I believe in "fair and balanced."

I say let's be more fair than anyone else. Let's be as fair to Main Street as we are to Wall Street - to the working men and women of America as we are to the big corporations, big government, and big investors.

Let's be as fair to poor families as we are to the First Family and the Royal Family (Yes, I looked up one evening, as more deaths were occurring in Iraq, more suffering was being endured on the Gulf Coast, and more Americans were losing their healthcare, and there on my public television screen was a special on "The Royals and their Pets.")

Let's be as fair to the skeptic of official policy as we are to its spokesman, as fair to the commoner as to the celebrity, and as fair to the lived experience of ordinary people as we are to the calculated opinion of think tank experts.

I'm for balance.

Let's balance the spin with the evidence, the rhetoric with the record, and opinion with reporting.

Let's balance what we're told with what we know. […]

Let's balance the view from Washington with the view from the country. […]

We ought to hit close to home, too - no matter who's in power.

Balance?

Let's balance the complaint of ideologues and their patrons in Congress and the press with the unarticulated pain and silent lament of the maid in the hotel room, the waitress in the coffee shop, and the clerk in the shopping mall - all struggling to make ends meet in an economy rigged against them. On second thought, let's give the maid, the waitress, and the clerk a voice. Let's give them a say. They deserve it. Their taxes pay for this system.

And let's balance programs written by the National Mining Association and Boeing with programs underwritten by the United Mine Workers, Consumer's Union, and Citizens for a Fair Economy. If they can't afford the underwriting, let's at least give them a hearing.

(Thanks to Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly for the tip.)