Bill Moyers' speech to the National Conference for Media

Although I am opposed to copy and paste, I don't want to change a word of this: It may be one of the most important speeches of our times.

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From Free Press, May 16, 2005 (date corrected from orginal website)
By Bill Moyers

The following is the prepared text for Bill Moyers’ speech to the National Conference for Media Reform on May 15, 2005. The event in St. Louis was organized and hosted by Free Press (www.freepress.net).


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I CAN’T IMAGINE BETTER COMPANY ON THIS BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY MORNING IN ST. LOUIS. You’re church for me today, and there’s no congregation in the country where I would be more likely to find more kindred souls than are gathered here.

There are so many different vocations and callings in this room — so many different interests and aspirations of people who want to reform the media — that only a presiding bishop like Bob McChesney with his great ecumenical heart could bring us together for a weekend like this.

What joins us all under Bob’s embracing welcome is our commitment to public media. Pat Aufderheide got it right, I think, in the recent issue of In These Times when she wrote: “This is a moment when public media outlets can make a powerful case for themselves. Public radio, public TV, cable access, public DBS channels, media arts centers, youth media projects, nonprofit Internet news services … low-power radio and webcasting are all part of a nearly invisible feature of today’s media map: the public media sector. They exist not to make a profit, not to push an ideology, not to serve customers, but to create a public — a group of people who can talk productively with those who don’t share their views, and defend the interests of the people who have to live with the consequences of corporate and governmental power.”

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We’re big kids; we can handle controversy and diversity, whether it’s political or religious points of view or two loving lesbian moms and their kids, visited by a cartoon rabbit. We are not too fragile or insecure to see America and the world entire for all their magnificent and sometimes violent confusion. “There used to be a thing or a commodity we put great store by,” John Steinbeck wrote. “It was called the people.”

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Shortened May 21, 2005 - please read or view the full speech at the links above