Now available online and airing on PBS stations across the country over the weekend, the final episode of the weekly commentary and news show Moyers & Company will mark the official television retirement (though not the career) of veteran journalist Bill Moyers.
In the fall of last year, Moyers announced with little fanfare that the show would be ending and he would retire from television (yes, this time he means it) after more than forty years working in print and broadcast media. Though Moyers will end his near- weekly appearance in the homes of millions of Americans, the website which he created in 2012, BillMoyers.com will continue to operate—creating both familiar and new kinds of content.
“Democracy is a public trust – a reciprocal agreement between generations to keep it in good repair and pass along… So to this new generation I say: over to you, welcome to the fight.” —Bill MoyersCelebrating his long career but lamenting the impact of his departure, historian Peter Dreier, in a piece posted to Common Dreams this week, argues that Moyers’ retirement from the airwaves will “leave a huge hole” not easily filled by others. “No other program has journalistic breadth and depth, as well as the progressive viewpoint, that Moyers’ show has provided viewers for over four decades,” Dreier wrote.
John Nichols, who in addition to writing for The Nation magazine has written several books on the history and current state of U.S. journalism, told Common Dreams that though Moyers “cannot be replaced, his legacy must be maintained.”
What has made Moyers’ presence on television so unique, explained Nichols, was the creation of a journalistic forum that largely lacking across the U.S. media landscape, especially in broadcast news.
“At a point when broadcast media tends increasingly to narrow rather than expand the discourse,” Nichols explained, “Bill Moyers has been virtually alone in recognizing the possibility and the necessity of a broader debate on economic and social issues —and on the critical questions of war and peace. It is not too much to say that his show kept the democratic flame lit for tens of millions of Americans. I do not know what we will do without him, but I recognize that his departure from the airwaves lays down a challenge for all of us.”
Profiled in the Washington Post on Friday, Moyers told the paper’s media reporter Paul Farhi via email there was a conscious decision not to produce a retrospective episode or otherwise make “a big deal” of his retirement. “If my work doesn’t speak for itself after all these years,” Moyers reportedly said as he turned down an offer for an in-depth interview, “I have failed and no amount of interpretation can help.”
Still, Farhi was able to summarize Moyers’ brand of journalism in recent years as being driven by various “passions”—delivered in an “avuncular and Texas-inflicted” style—which focused largely on exploring the political and cultural battles surrounding “the corrupting influence of money in politics… the environment and civil rights… [and] against growing economic inequality.”
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