Bill Moyers - Mythical Conceit

An interesting bit I found on the MRC website. Bill Moyers got a smackdown from his own ombudsman, and here's his letter of response:

"The journalist’s job is not to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium between two opposing opinions....The journalist’s job is to seek out and offer the public the best thinking on an issue, event, or story.

That’s what I did regarding the argument for impeachment....There’s a movement for impeachment, not one against impeachment, and to fail to explore the arguments driving that movement would be as foolish as when Washington journalists in the months before the invasion of Iraq dared not talk about ‘occupation’ because official sources only wanted to talk about ‘liberation.’...I could have aired a Beltway-like ‘debate’ between a Democrat and a Republican, or a conservative and a liberal, but that’s usually conventional wisdom and standard practice, and public broadcasting was meant to be an alternative, not an echo."

— PBS’s Bill Moyers in a letter to PBS ombudsman Michael Getler, who had criticized the July 13 edition of Bill Moyers Journal for featuring only guests who favor Bush and Cheney’s impeachment.

I love it when the media-types decide that they know better than everyone else. It's interesting to see their thought processes, as in the above letter.

A few questions for Bill Moyers:

1) If the journalist's job is to provide the public with the "best thinking" out there, who decides what the "best" thinking is?

2) If there is a "movement" for impeachment, how can there not be one against it?

3) Since when was public broadcasting meant to be an alternative to anything? Just because you suck at your craft and have to appear between telethons and Nova re-runs doesn't mean you can give yourself a cool title like "alternative."

4) When did journalists "dare not" talk about anything because officials didn't want them to? Did you even watch the pre-invasion press conferences? I did. Guys were asking Generals if Baghdad was going to resemble Stalingrad. This proves two things: they don't toe the official line, and they are morons.

5) "The journalist's job is not to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium..." Really?

News to us. We lowly worst-thinkers always thought it was. It's nice to know that Bill Moyers believes equilibrium in a story of opinions is a thing of myth and legend.

In case you missed Journalism 101, bonehead, here's what we want from you:

Who, What, When, Where, How.

When it comes to the why, give me both sides of the story, if you please.