Bill Moyers Blasts CPB Chair Tomlinson

Television journalist Bill Moyers harangued Corporation for Public Broadcasting chair Kenneth Tomlinson at the recent National Media Reform Conference. Tomlinson is "aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias," according to the May 2 edition of the New York Times. "The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party gets," Moyers told the audience of 1,400. "That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth." The veteran journalist skewered Tomlinson (mp3) for spending $10,000 of public money to monitor PBS's "Now with Bill Moyers" and refusing to release the results. "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."