Why "We The People" are glad that Bill Moyers is back on PBS

In December 2003 George W Bush appointed Gay Hart Gaines as the head of Corporate Public Broadcasting, which controls government funding for PBS. She was a Bush Ranger in 2004 (re: contributed $100,000 to canpaign). Mainstream media wasn't enough for Bush & Co. they had to control PBS too, and Bill Moyers was at the top of their hit list.

For reasons unbeknownst to me Bill Moyers is back, and from what is being said he will be on every week with Bill Moyers Journal. It is easy to see why he has chosen Media Wars as his subject. Not many people knew about this program, but it's a normal day. It was only advertised on PBS and the internet.

Here is some history from when Bill Moyers NOW left PBS


Bill Moyers Leaves PBS in the Middle of a Rebalancing Act

By Joy Press
The Village Voice

24-30 November 2004 Issue

A few weeks ago, Bill Moyers, the venerable face of progressive current-affairs analysis on television, warned that the next four years were set to be a golden age for Watergate-style sleuth reporters. "I just think every time you wed the state and business together like this, you get corruption flowing like the Mississippi River," he announced on his PBS series, Now. Ironically, Moyers himself isn't sticking around to partake in the coming "bonanza for investigative journalism" he predicts. Although he's one of the few living media commentators whose folksy manner and heady background (he served as both a Baptist minister and a press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson) could conceivably bridge the gap between red state and blue state, secular and religious, Moyers is planning to retire from Now on December 17.

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Now has been a focus for right-wing ire from the start. Moyers infuriated the right after the 2002 congressional elections with his take on the Republican mandate: "If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture." Using the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a body that provides funding to certain PBS shows, the right seems to be enforcing "balance" by financially supporting a raft of new public-affairs programming. Along with Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered and The Journal Editorial Report, there's a series co-hosted by "family values"-defending culture critic Michael Medved in the works for late 2005.

The CPB was originally created to buffer PBS from political pressure, but some of the recent appointees appear blatantly partisan, such as Gay Hart Gaines, who chaired Newt Gingrich's political action committee, and Cheryl Halpern, clearly introduced to be some kind of watchdog. During the November 2003 Senate Commerce Committee's confirmation hearings for Halpern, Senator Trent Lott blasted Moyers's post-election commentary as "the most blatantly partisan, irresponsible thing I've ever heard in my life, and yet [the CPB] has not seemed to be willing to deal with Bill Moyers and that type of programming." Halpern responded: "The fact of the matter is, I agree." For his part, Moyers didn't hide his feelings about the new blood at the CPB, dubbing the new appointees "ideological warriors" and telling writer Ken Auletta, "This is the first time in my thirty-two years in public broadcasting that C.P.B. has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons."

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CPB Board of Directors
Cheryl Halpern
Chair

From Wikipedia

Cheryl Feldman Halpern is the chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). She was appointed in 2005. An active Republican, she was chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition for eight years. In this capacity, she has been a critic of National Public Radio, accusing the public network of anti-Israeli bias. She has extensive experience with overseeing pro-American media campaigns abroad. In 1990, she was confirmed as a member of the Board for International Broadcasting and as a director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). From 1995 through 2002, she served as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees non-military overseas broadcasts by the US Government such as Radio Martí, the Voice of America, and Radio Free Iraq.

Mrs. Halpern has been nominated to the boards of national or international public broadcasting organizations by Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Gay Hart Gaines
Vice Chair

Gay Hart Gaines
From SourceWatch
Gay Hart Gaines is the vice chair for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She was appointed to the board by George W. Bush in December 2003 for a term ending in 2010. She was elected as vice chair in September 2005 along with CPB chair Cheryl Halpern.

She is a long-time Republican Party fundraiser. The Nation's David Corn writes that Gaines and her husband Stanley Gaines "have contributed at least half a million dollars to GOP causes since 1998."[1] In 2004, she was a Bush Pioneer, bundling over $100,000 for Bush's reelection campaign.[2] Other Republican Party involvement includes being a charter member of GOPAC, which she chaired from 1993-1997.

Gaines came to the CPB with no previous experience in broadcasting. Common Causes' Cynthia Wexler pointed out that Gaines was "ardent fundraiser for Newt Gingrich in the days when Gingrich was really all about zeroing out the funds for Public Broadcasting."[3] According to her CPB biography, she is "an interior designer by training."

Gaines is affiliated with several right-wing organizations. Her CPB biography states that she is a current member of the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. She has also served as a board member of the Hudson Institute and was a chairman of the National Review Institute from 1991-1993.[4]