Our debt to Bill Moyers Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia."

Bill Moyers who tackled the reality of an Internet populated by people who may not be journalists by training and are making up their own rules as they go along. He said he was glad to see bloggers credentialed for the conventions, then urged his audience to read Dan Gillmor's new book on citizen media



Bill Moyers who tackled the reality of an Internet populated by people who may not be journalists by training and are making up their own rules as they go along. He said he was glad to see bloggers credentialed for the conventions, then urged his audience to read Dan Gillmor's new book on citizen media

CBS Scandal Highlights Tension Between Bloggers and News Media
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While CBS News scrambled for answers and bloggers bragged about their power, news pros at the 2004 SPJ convention warned of the challenges facing all journalists in today's digital age.
Staci D. Kramer
Posted: 2004-10-01

Editor’s note: The author is a former national board member of SPJ, a member of the national Ethics committee and moderator of a panel about blogging at the 2004 convention. She has been to all but one of the last 15 conventions.

Somehow, it was appropriate that the same week the controversial 60 Minutes II piece about President George W. Bush's National Guard service aired, hundreds of journalists, academics and students gathered in Manhattan for the annual convention of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Buzz about the story reported by Dan Rather started early, whirring through the Grand Hyatt, serving as an unplanned backdrop for a program that included appearances by a host of high-profile journalists and media executives -- among them, Walter Cronkite, Brian Williams and Bill Moyers.

Through it all, the Internet played a starring role -- sometimes as the villain, sometimes wearing the white hat and sometimes, most realistically, as a bit of both. Outside the hotel, online discussions were fueling a journalism brush fire over allegations of forged documents while the journalists in the hotel filled rooms for discussions about credibility, ethics, the First Amendment, and, above all, about doing the job better.

For a decade, journalists have been grappling with the changes spurred by the adoption of the Internet as a primary communications force: news cycles on fast-forward, 24/7 deadline pressure, a "shrinking" world, multiple layers of competition. Overriding all of these, though, is the need to deal with the disappearing boundaries between journalists and non-journalists.

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But it was Bill Moyers who tackled the reality of an Internet populated by people who may not be journalists by training and are making up their own rules as they go along. He said he was glad to see bloggers credentialed for the conventions, then urged his audience to read Dan Gillmor's new book on citizen media. "He argues persuasively that Big Media is losing its monopoly on the news, thanks to the Internet," Moyers told them, adding, "He’s on to something. In one sense we are discovering all over again the feisty spirit of our earliest days as a nation when the republic and a free press were growing up together."

In an eloquent, emotional speech peppered with quotes and history, Moyers described a time when the young country had more than a 1,000 newspapers. "They were passionate and pugnacious and often deeply prejudiced; some spoke for Indian-haters, immigrant-bashers, bigots, jingoes, and land-grabbers. But some called to the better angels of our nature. ..."

Still, he warned his audience that even with the advent of a modern wave of citizen media, "You and I will in no way be relieved from wrestling with what it means ethically to be a professional journalist. I believe Tom Rosenstiel got it right in that Boston Globe article when he said that the proper question is not whether you call yourself a journalist but whether your own work constitutes journalism. And what is that? I like his answer: 'A journalist tries to get the facts right,' tries to get 'as close as possible to the verifiable truth' -- not to help one side win or lose but 'to inspire public discussion.' Neutrality, he concludes, is not a core principle of journalism, 'but the commitment to facts, to public consideration, and to independence from faction, is.'"

When this story was posted in October 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:

Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL Interview PCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before. Plus the debate continues over Safety and Security.

Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention Governor Schwarzenegger praised the Peace Corps at the Republican National Convention: "We're the America that sends out Peace Corps volunteers to teach village children." Schwarzenegger has previously acknowledged his debt to his father-in-law, Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver, for teaching him "the joy of public service" and Arnold is encouraging volunteerism by creating California Service Corps and tapping his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead it. Leave your comments and who can come up with the best Current Events Funny?

Peace Corps: One of the Best Faces of America Teresa Heinz Kerry celebrates the Peace Corps Volunteer as one of the best faces America has ever projected in a speech to the Democratic Convention. The National Review disagreed and said that Heinz's celebration of the PCV was "truly offensive." What's your opinion and can you come up with a Political Funny?

Read the stories and leave your comments.