He recently did this video essay on the Health Care debate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The evening of September 26 will be a busy one with two important political events in Montgomery County. The Women For Obama 19th Amendment Anniversary House Party will be followed by the 1st Presidential Debate Watch Party.

This year’s Presidential Debate at the University of Mississippi marks an historic development in U.S. presidential elections political history. This is the first time for the staging of a presidential debate in the state of Mississippi.

Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain will appear live to debate issues of concern to the American public in Ole Miss’ Gertrude C. Ford Center in Oxford, Mississippi. The debate will be moderated by Jim Lehrer, executive editor and anchor of The NewsHour on PBS. This debate will focus on foreign policy and national security.

Tennessee steps into the national political spotlight on October 7th. On that date, Belmont University will host the second 2008 presidential debate, a town hall setting, to be moderated by Tom Brokaw, special correspondent for NBC News. Both events are being staged primarily as prime time television viewing events. Belmont University is hosting special a pre-debate dialogue and symposiums in advance of the Sept. 26th evening debate. Both universities are giving their students priority for any on-site seats. Belmont is anticipating a 3,000 person audience for its event. Both schools have issued press releases declaring that they have no control over the limited number of tickets to the debates.

Locally, on Sept. 26th, at 8 PM, the Montgomery County Democratic Party Headquarters will serve as host site for a “Presidential Debate” Watch Party. The party headquarters is located at 534 Madison Street, at the corner of Madison Street and University Drive, across from the Madison Street Church of Christ. The House Party is open to the public. To confirm seating or for more information call (931) 552-9076 or visit the website at: <www.ClarksvilleForObama.com> Volunteer food and drink donations will be appreciated.

Volunteer support opportunities are available at all levels. For more information on volunteering with the Montgomery County Democratic Party, call (931) 552-5523 or visit the party headquarters. For Obama/Biden campaign volunteer information, call (931) 553-9076 or visit their website at: <www.ClarksvilleForObama.com> General election and Obama presidential campaign yard signs, bumper stickers and buttons are also available at the party headquarters.

The War, a Ken Burns film on World War II, will debut as a seven episode series on PBS, including Nashville Public Television (NPT), on September 23-26 and September 30 through October 2 at 7 p.m. In Clarksville, NPT is seen on Channel 8.

A few years ago, Ken Burns riveted us with his production of The Civil War, a series that electrified , entertained, educated, and aroused our emotions. This new series promises to follow Burn’s groundbreaking tradition and style.

According to information posted by PBS on this series, The War explores “the most intimate human dimensions of the greatest cataclysm in history — a worldwide catastrophe that touched the lives of every family on every street in America.”

I personally witnessed and experienced the horror of the Vietnam War during my two years in that country. In such an environment, one sees the best of human beings and the worst depravities human beings can inflict on one another. War gives us a unique insight into the nature of man.

I anticipate that Ken Burns’ The War will touch us and give us an in-depth look at World War II, which explores the war from an American perspective, following the experiences of a handful of men and women — on the home front and the battlefield — whose lives were transformed during the devastating years from ‘41 to ‘45.

Burns and Lynn Novick wrote and produced the series, which takes us through the fighting, the living and the dying, across history, to places such as Monte Cassino, Omaha Beach, Anzio, Guadacanal, Saipan and Okinawa.

The War celebrates and honors the heroic deeds and the memories of families, friends and neighbors who served in this conflagration. It will remind us of their bravery, sacrifice, determination, and discipline, and the hardships of our citizen soldiers in World War II, and will rekindle our sense of patriotism and challenge us to appreciate the contribution of these soldiers and their families. I believe the time invested in watching this series will be both rewarding and educational.

PBS online has an interactive link for this film and a PDF study guide for The War.

If you missed seeing it, or if you wish to forward it to your email lists, You can watch Bill Moyer’s Journal:  Buying the war online.

How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?

Set your PVR’s and stock up on popcorn, because this is really gonna be can’t miss TV.

David Swanson, who saw an advance copy of the program, writes, “Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you’ll never watch television news again-not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

On Wednesday, April 25 at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), watch the premiere epidsode of Bill Moyer’s newest show on PBS, Bill Moyers Journal. Their first show will be “Buying the War,” a 90-minute documentary that explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, it includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of Meet the Press; Bob Simon of 60 Minutes; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers (now McClatchy).

In this clip from the premiere of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, talks about the reporting he was seeing and reading out of the beltway, and John Walcott and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers (now The McClatchy Company), discuss their work burrowing deep into the intelligence agencies to determine whether there was any evidence for the Bush Administration’s case for war.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit and delivered a speech in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner. He was hailed by media stars as a “breathtaking” example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein. Despite profound questions over the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House’s claim that the war was won. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declared, “We’re all neo-cons now;” NPR’s Bob Edwards said, “The war in Iraq is essentially over;” and Fortune magazine’s Jeff Birnbaum said, “It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context.”

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? “What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored,” says Moyers. “How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?”

In “Buying the War” Bill Moyers and producer Kathleen Hughes document the reporting of Walcott, Landay and Strobel, the Knight Ridder team that burrowed deep into the intelligence agencies to try and determine whether there was any evidence for the Bush Administration’s case for war. “Many of the things that were said about Iraq didn’t make sense,” says Walcott. “And that really prompts you to ask, ‘Wait a minute. Is this true? Does everyone agree that this is true? Does anyone think this is not true?’”

In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. Journalist Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, questioned the reporting he was seeing and reading. “I mean we knew things or suspected things that perhaps the Washington press corps could not suspect. For example, the absurdity of putting up a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda,” he tells Moyers. “Saddam…was a total control freak. To introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn’t believe it for an instant.” The program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press, which was then seized upon and amplified by an army of pundits. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. THE NEW YORK TIMES reported on Iraq’s “worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,” but according to Landay, claims by the administration about the possibility of nuclear weapons were highly questionable. Yet, his story citing the “lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons” got little play. In fact, throughout the media landscape, stories challenging the official view were often pushed aside while the administration’s claims were given prominence. “From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in THE WASHINGTON POST making the administration’s case for war,” says Howard Kurtz, the POST’s media critic. “But there was only a handful of stories that ran on the front page that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions.”

“Buying the War” examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what’s changed? “More and more the media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration,” says THE WASHINGTON POST’s Walter Pincus. “We’ve sort of given up being independent on our own.”

“Buying the War” is produced by Kathleen Hughes. Written by: Bill Moyers and Kathleen Hughes. Edited by: Alison Amron. Executive Editors: Bill Moyers and Judith Davidson Moyers. Executive Producers: Felice Firestone and Judy Doctoroff O’Neill.

About Bill Moyers Journal

Ideas, Analysis, and Interviews
from Bill Moyers weekly on PBS
Fridays at 9 beginning April 27

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL is supported by an extensive companion Web site at pbs.org/moyers where visitors can interact, give feedback and sign up for the Moyers podcast, which was listed in iTunes Best of 2006 People’s Choice top 100 new podcasts. After the broadcast, each episode will be available in its entirety for viewing online. The Web site is produced by Kristin Miller.

Funders for BILL MOYERS JOURNAL include: the Partridge Foundation, a John and Polly Guth Charitable Fund; the Park Foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues; The Herb Alpert Foundation; Marilyn and Bob Clements and The Clements Foundation; Bernard and Audrey Rapoport and the Bernard and Audrey Rapoport Foundation; Fetzer Institute; the Orfalea Family Foundation; the Public Welfare Foundation, and our sole corporate sponsor Mutual of America Life Insurance Company.

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL is a production of Public Affairs Television, Inc. and a national presentation of Thirteen/WNET New York.

Originally broadcast on New Mexico PBS channel, KNME-TV, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In 2004, a centuries old dispute between the Navajo Nation and New Mexico over the water of the San Juan River Basin finally came to an end. In the final agreement, the Navajo Nation maintained just 56% of their San Juan water rights in exchange for a massive infrastructure project to bring running water to parts of the reservation that have gone without for centuries. In turn, the agreement provides the much-needed water reserves for New Mexico to continue to develop into the 21st century.

Now in 2007 this historic water settlement will go before the halls of Congress for final approval. But will it pass?

“The Water Haulers” features profiles of Navajos struggling to prosper in their dry ancestral lands, expert explanation of these pressing water rights issues, and interviews with policymakers throughout the Southwest. This documentary explores the challenges facing a culture when the basic human right of access to water is unobtainable.

* Text on this page taken from the Google Video listing for this documentary.