Longtime Public Broadcasting heavyweight journalist Bill Moyers and senior writer Michael Winship took out a full page ad in the New York Times last week urging PBS live up to what it once was and go the extra mile next week during the House impeachment hearings.

Moyers and Winship write: “We believe that for the sake of the nation, public television should not only broadcast them live as they happen but repeat them in primetime so that Americans who work during the day have a chance to watch and judge for themselves Donald Trump’s guilt or innocence.”  

The question is, does PBS dare to side with the Constitution or prefer the status quo. What should its mission be?

Vermonters can contact VermontPBS for a local answer and encourage our station officials to urge the national network to broadcast the hearings.

Moyers and Winship continue: “During this present Constitutional crisis, the PBS Newshour and Frontline, as well as Washington Week in Review – which was around during those Watergate days — have done their best to keep up with day-to-day coverage of the bizarre developments of Trumpgate. Episodic coverage of the news, however, is not enough to get past the falsehoods and fraud that obstruct the truth in the news, especially when so many characters in the drama possess what Thomas Carlyle called ‘the talent of lying in a way that cannot be laid hold of.’” [added emphasis]