Bill Moyers To Host New PBS Series - Beginning with "Buying The War"

[04/25/07 3:00AM PST Bump & Update] Most readers know that I am not a big fan of television. Occasionally though there are some real gems on TV that are worth watching, and I'm quite sure this will be one of them.

A new PBS/Bill Moyers 90 minute documentary coming up next week tonight will examine media complicity in the justifications for the invasion of Iraq. If you're unable to watch it on TV it will be available to view online at Bill Moyers Journal after it airs tonight. Scroll down this page for a preview video.

Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher, in his article yesterday 19 April 2007: "Devastating" Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming, called the documentary "The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq":

The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again - yet Moyers points out, "the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses."

PBS Press Room - Program Release:
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL "Buying the War"
Documentary Explores Role of the Press in the Lead-Up to the Invasion of Iraq

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9/11 continue to go largely unreported? “What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored,” says Bill Moyers. “How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?”

A new PBS series, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, premieres at a special time with “Buying the War,” a documentary that explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. The program airs Wednesday, April 25, 2007, 9:00-10:30 p.m. ET on PBS.
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In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. Journalist Bob Simon of “60 Minutes,” who was based in the Middle East, questioned the reporting he was seeing and reading. “I mean we knew things or suspected things that perhaps the Washington press corps could not suspect. For example, the absurdity of putting up a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda,” he tells Moyers. “Saddam … was a total control freak. To introduce a wild card like al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn’t believe it for an instant.”

PBS has produced an online a clip from the program:

The program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press, which was then seized upon and amplified by an army of pundits. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. The New York Times reported on Iraq’s “worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,” but according to Landay, claims by the administration about the possibility of nuclear weapons were highly questionable. Yet his story citing the “lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons” got little play. In fact, across the media landscape, stories challenging the official view were often pushed aside while the administration’s claims were given prominence.

“From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in The Washington Post making the administration’s case for war,” says Howard Kurtz, the Post’s media critic. “But there was only a handful of stories that ran on the front page that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions.”
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■ BILL MOYERS JOURNAL is supported by an extensive companion Web site at pbs.org, where visitors can interact, give feedback and sign up for the Moyers podcast, which was listed in iTunes Best of 2006 People’s Choice top 100 new podcasts. After the broadcast, each episode will be available in its entirety for viewing online.

All of our posts related to the press enabling Bush, and to propaganda, are here.