Bill Moyers’ ‘Buying the War’
“Buying the War,” a Bill Moyers PBS documentary that aired in most TV markets on Wednesday night, is a powerful bookend to The Big War Story the Media Is Ignoring, my essay on how the mainstream media was shocked, awed and duped in the wake of 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq War.
Moyers begins:
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.
Since then thousands of people have died, and many are dying to this day. Yet the story of how the media bought what the White House was selling has not been told in depth on television. As the war rages into its fifth year, we look back at those months leading up to the invasion, when our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war.”
“Buying the War” will be rerun, but if you can’t wait, click here for a transcript.
opinions powered by SendLove.to
61 Responses to “Bill Moyers’ ‘Buying the War’”
This is a very, very disheartening exchange of opinions, more like an exchange of insults.
The documentary was about the role of the PRESS. Those of you defending the war, your politics or whatever else would be wise to consider how you would react if the opposite had happened: how would you feel if Saddam actually was ready to set off the mushroom cloud and the press colluded with the administration to cover it up? It’s about selling ideas rather than presenting them honestly, suppressing doubt, and denigrating opposing opinions
It is really, really depressing how incapable people seem to be to think in the abstract or to think beyond their own favorite loves or hates.
If this is an example of what ‘we, the people’ will vote for, I’m afraid for our futute, very afraid.
domajot,
Your point is well made. The numbers of those who use personal attack as a primary debate tool have increased lately and it seems that when only those who they are attacking protest they think their ‘debate style’ is acceptable. Those who specialize in ad hominem, whether from the right or left, need to be called to task by everyone. We all know better, or at least we should.
Thanks, SteveK.
At least one person heard me.
The general tone here at TMV is being eroded, and that is a real shame.
Doma- that’s the very point about Moyers- he is not an ‘objective’ journalist, but a partisan hack.
I can agree in substance with what he says but still find him personally noxious. On the other hand, I disagree with most of what Bill Buckley says but find him delightful and witty.
Moyers is a joyless hack. His lack of joy I don’t care about, but his hack journalism is a shame.
> DLS- We have seen how the
> press hasn’t asked the hard
> questions, especially after 9/11.
1. They were as pro-war as nearly all Americans were.
2. They have been anti-Bush since 2000.
3. They often are more inept than you or I or other non-journalists.
4. The Bush administration won’t often answer their questions, anyway, any more than they answer Congress’s.
DLS- They wer certainly on the Bushco hagiography train after 9/11, and up to the taking dowwn of saddam’s stature. I recall several journalists acting as if this was Normandy. So, anti-Bush the last 3 years or so, but in the most wimpy way.
> if you support the President
> and the war,
Since the war I have defended the President against still-often-inappropriate attacks, but I have not defended him where his behavior has been wrong. (Same for the rest of his administration.)
Now if you are asking, rhetorically only, “if you are among those still die-hard supporters…,”
> you probably think that they
> only report the bombings,
> and that they should never
> have written about the secret
> prisons in Eastern Europe
Or Abu Ghraib, etc.? Well, I’m not that way. I am smart enough to question the motive behind the reporting of such things (too often it’s just Bush-bashing; what’s the tone of the “reporting,” for example?).
cosmo-
The topic here, though, is not anyone’s opinion of Moyers, but the documentary’s focus on our sheep-like press. That should concern everyone, regardless of political persuasion. All of us depend on the press’s investigative reporting. The blogs just regurgitate and critiqe other people’s investigations.
I disagree with your assessment of Moyers, but I don’t call you names or assign nasty adjectives to describe you.
I have disliked Bush, on some visceral level, from the first
news clip I saw of him. But I don’t call him names (in public), and I listen to his speeches with as much of an open mind as I can muster.
I like Moyers for bringin up subjects no one else does. He hosted a great series on religion, from which I learned a lot.
You (meaning anyone) insult Moyers, then someone else insults you, then you insult the insulter.
That kind of exchange just produces more venom. It produces no useful information.
BTW, I disagreed with Buckley on a host of issues, but I loved his erudition and wit. I did not insult him.
I don;t agree with Moyers on many things. But I love the topics he brings up for discussion.
The civil tone here was what was special about TMV. Lately, it’s under severe challenge by a host of passionate voices who don’t value civiliy much.
Doma- I agree the point is about the press, but not only its sheep like behavior, but its shrill partisanship. As I pointed out to Kim Ritter- Moyers gets shrill before his first sentence is done.
READ the transcipt. It’s there- in Black & White, and that shrillness undermines his very credibility on the subject of Bush or anything. As I quoted Pogo, it’s ridiculous for a Moyers to critique the press’s behavior since his own behavior is part of the problem- if not the sheep-like mewing, then the nasty shrillness. To ignore that is to give up any claim to moderation or just plain common sense. Manifestly, someone like Shaun does, since he cannot even defend a Moyers well.
Calling someone who acts in a shrill,partisan hack-like way a shrill partisan hack is calling a spade a spade. To NOT poin that out is to be disingenuous, especially since a Moyers adds hypocrisy to his list of journalistic sins with suich a laughable report- even if I agree with it in principle.
And his series on Genesis, religion, the arts, Joseph Campbell exhibit him as an ‘obsequious, sniveling, none too bright PC idiot’ even more than this show. Glad you learnt from it, but from people who actually take such subjects seriously he comes off as condescending in the max. He knows naught of most he preens on. Literally, once in one of his wretched poetry shows, he asked a PC poet named Naomi Shihab Nyre about a line where she stated that, I believe, ‘ideas or something grew from her shoes,’ and then he stoop-kneed, asked her- ‘do ideas really grow from your shoes?’
If you read the texts of his interviews- and I have a book of them, it’s at a retarded Oprah level. Whether he was really so stupid as to not get the idea of metaphor (even Nye’s bad sort) or whether he was just talking down to the audience, does not matter. Way one he’s a fool, way two he’s a condescending jackass.
And his political opinions are as simpletonian as Bush’s, in reverse.
I don’t care that you ‘like’ him or ‘dislike’ Bush. tehy are both idiots and morons. That is not venomous, no more so than calling a David Duke or Louis Farrakhan a bigot.
Nor is it a lack of civility. I have stated the case, and Kim even provides the ammo. If you choose to ignore it, fine. But don’t think your willful ignorance of the facts is going to be repeated by all.
And that is spot on what this post is about, not a straw man. So deal with what is at hand.
Brian- You childish “reaction” post are noted…every day….over and over again.
I’m not from SO Cal, but I was there at the time. You have made yet another baseless assumption, just like your politics. The first word in assumption is ass and you resemble the remark with every bounce off the key pad your grubby little fingers make. Cheers.
$7 a gallon is typical speculation of fear meant to cloud reality (death and destruction) by the cadre of neocons whose force and influence is accellerating toward complete failure. The lies shall become the truth.