Strange kerfuffle over at Jimmy Akin’s site with letters from Bill Moyer’s lawyers threatening him about a story he posted on his site previously. Amazing how things go right to a lawyer when a simple email to Jimmy Akin would have been sufficient in the first place.
The offending post contained a statement by Dr. Beisner relating to Bill Moyers.
"..he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats. "
A statement of which Bill Moyers denies ever making. I remember seeing that quote before and at the time and questioning its accuracy. Now I am in no way a Bill Moyers’ apologist and I have fisked him thoroughly in the past. The reason I doubted him saying this is that I have heard him questioned about media bias before. I have little doubt that he truly believes that he sees himself as totally unbiased and as an independent so I think it is totally out of character for him to admit that he isn’t. I do think that he is totally delusional when it comes to this since his fragrant bias permeates everything he does. But like most in the media they truly don’t believe this about themselves.
Jimmy’s lawyer Stephen Dillard of the blog Southern Appeal replied to Moyer’s lawyer’s pointing out that this didn’t rise to defamation and that a simple request would have solicited Jimmy to post Moyer’s denial of the quote.
What I find ironic is that this all takes place within the context of a series Moyers is doing on the environment which covers in part evangelicals. Last year Moyer’s published an editorial claiming that religious right is deliberately trying to despoil the environment and using as evidence the Left Behind novels. In it he claimed that James Watt who was President Reagan’s first secretary of the interior said:
…that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."
What Watt actually said was "we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."
So now Bill Moyers’ is so worried about his "integrity as a journalist" without ever recanting his own defamation. A lie that was subsequently used by other media outlets as being true, though some have issued a correction.
2 comments
I find it hard to believe Moyers said that too. He’s a liberal, but he ain’t dumb.
On the one hand, he may not be stupid, but on the other hand, his solution only exacerbates the problem. If he really wanted to save his reputation, he would not have flexed his lawyers and ensured the story would make it all the way around the more trustworthy news media, the internet.
I would like to propose a third explanation that has less to do with BM’s tactical shrewdness. I think the episode can be explained by a rather obvious fact: Moyers is evil.
How do we know this? Well, for one, we know he thinks himself too important to be bothered by a little thing like the truth.
We know he could care less about the free speech demonstrating a hyper sensitivity for a public figure so openly involved in politics. A journalist acting with such a blatant disregard for free speech is as scandalous as an atheist priest. Or it should be, but in this day and age, not so much.
Also, as has been commonly pointed out on this blog, sin makes you stupid. Someone who regularly engages in deception is just as likely to become a victim of his own self-deception.
Therefore, I think it is entirely possible BM could have said what he is alleged to have said (or something like it) and not realize it would come across as biased as it did. When this happens to an insincere person (and he is an insincere person), they will often protest saying “I did not say that” when what they truly mean is: “I said it, but I did not intend it to be as rife with meaning as it was.”
This is because a person in his situation with his worldview would place primary importance on his money-making (or tax-taking) reputation and view the status of his eternal soul as being secondary or even a completely unrelated issue. He is not as interested in what actually happened as he is in how he can spin it to his advantage.
Someone immersed in such habits is bound to get careless about expressing himself and I think Moyers is just such a person.