MediaWatch: January 1992
Table of Contents:
PBS Shows Match Democratic Agenda
Moralizing Moyers. PBS has announced its schedule of election season specials and it's clear that balance is of little interest to the tax funded network. For an hour each week from April through November, PBS will distributer Listening to America with Bill Moyers. NBC's liberal commentator John Chancellor will also host a two-hour look at health care.
In addition, PBS is providing a platform for three specials hosted by Democratic operative and PBS poobah Bill Moyers. The first, Minimum Wages, aired on January 8. Moyers spent the hour arguing that businesses are "creating a work force which can barely afford to buy the goods and services it produces....For more than a decade, changes in the global and domestic economies have lowered real wages, creating what some have called `a silent depression.'" Moyers continued: "Americans are dividing into two groups, one that works for a living and makes it and one that works for a living and can't make it. It's a division that threatens to leave hard-working people permanently poor."
Since official government statistics show average wages increased during the 1980s, Moyers resorted to anecdotes to support his liberal thesis. He profiled four Milwaukee citizens unable to replace their lost factory jobs with equally high-paying ones.
After an hour he concluded: "Today, making it in America means more family members working longer hours for less pay and fewer benefits. If the trend continues, it will change radically America's work force and America's future. Economic progress will come to fewer and fewer of us, the divisions among us will grow and millions will find that poverty and a paycheck go hand in hand."
Two more Moyers specials are on the way: a look at racial prejudice on February 5 and an examination of the "human services system" on March 25. Democratic candidates don't need campaign commercials. They have PBS.
