Peter Dreier: An interview with Bill Moyers (from the latest issue of The Progressive)

We are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.

Last October, Bill Moyers announced that he was retiring and that his weekly show, Moyers & Company, would end January 3. Three weeks later, in response to an outpouring of e-mails, letters, and Facebook comments urging him to reconsider, Moyers recanted. He will continue to host the show. His only pushback was to recast the show from an hour to a half-hour format.

Moyers, who turns eighty in June, has been one of the most prolific and influential figures in American journalism. Born in 1934 to dirt-poor farmers, Moyers left Marshall, Texas, in 1954 to attend college. At the University of Texas, he majored in journalism while working full time as assistant news editor for KTBC-TV for $100 a week. He graduated in 1956 and then studied theology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Q: You’ve announced your retirement three times, then changed your mind. Why?

Bill Moyers: When I announced my retirement last October, it lasted all of seventeen days. I really meant it, but during that time thousands of viewers wrote to say, “Don’t go!” Reading those letters, I felt like a deserter abandoning his comrades in the heat of battle. So, I took stock: My health is good. I like what I do and keep thinking the best is yet to come. I’m only seventy-nine. So over coffee one morning, my wife and I looked at each other and said: “Why not?”

Q: What gives you the will power and energy to keep up the fight?

Moyers: Somewhere I read, “There’s another man within me that’s angry with me.” So, yes—I’m angry at what’s happening to our country and angry with myself that I can’t do more. I would be miserable if I couldn’t bear witness.

Q: What role has your religious faith played in shaping your political views and your journalism?

Moyers: When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together. I take “We, the People” seriously because I don’t know how we build a civilization without reciprocity. There’s a moral contract in that Preamble. And although I was brought up in a culturally and religious conservative culture, as a Baptist I was taught that no one has the right to subpoena your conscience.

full: http://www.progressive.org/bill-moyers