Moyers relaunches "Journal"; Colbert, Tom Wolfe and Captain Hook?

I should probably be commenting on Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel or Illinois Sen. Barack Obama—two parts of last night’s democratic presidential candidates’ first debate, but instead, here are key phrases and comments from April 25’s Bill Moyers’ Journal, now back on the air at PBS after 26 years of hibernation. “Buying the War,” about the mainstream American media’s failure to properly handle information about the run-up to the Iraq War, reflects main talking points from the “Media, War, and Conflict” conference held here at Marquette last Thursday and Friday. I wrote about the conference’s keynote speech by David Zurawik, Baltimore Sun TV critic, in Tuesday’s Marquette Tribune. Note: these quotes are not in direct sequence, but all are in the order in which they appeared on the show.

And then there was Fox News: Whose chief executive — the veteran Republican operative and media strategist Roger Ailes — had privately urged the white house to use the harshest measures possible after 9/11...

BILL MOYERS: What I was wrestling with that night listening to you is; once we let our emotions out as journalists on the air, once we say, we'll line up with the President, can we ever really say to the country the President's out of line.

DAN RATHER: By the way Bill, this is not an excuse. I don't think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war. There were exceptions. There were some people, who, I think, did a better job than others. But overall and in the main there's no question that we didn't do a good job.

WALTER ISAACSON: And there was even almost a patriotism police which, you know, they'd be up there on the internet sort of picking anything a Christiane Amanpour, or somebody else would say as if it were disloyal.

BILL MOYERS: Dan Rather is talking about prominent Washington figures in and outside of government…known as neoconservatives. They had long wanted to transform the Middle East, beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein. The terrorist attacks gave them the chance they wanted. And the media gave them a platform.

BILL MOYERS: Among their leading spokesmen were Richard Perle and James Woolsey. Both sat on the Defense Policy Board advising Donald Rumsfeld. And they used their inside status to assure the press that overthrowing Hussein would be easy.

There’s much, much more of this from the program— you can read it or watch the video for the rest. And next week’s guest is Jon Stewart, talking through the questions, “Why do so many get their news and analysis from his fake news show?” and, “What’s so funny about the media’s cozy relationship with Washington?”

By the by, Tom Wolfe on The Colbert Report Thursday = banter about pirates, ie. Cpt. Hook, as well as Colbert claiming he invented New New Journalism, a form that has plenty of room for imagination and, as Colbert stated it, making stuff up to make the story more entertaining.