The Ridenhour Courage Prize

Ron Ridenhour is the soldier who broke the story of the My Lai massacre. An award named for him for excellence in journalism will become a lot harder to give away if Bill Moyers ever retires. He is the Last of the Best, today's Walter Cronkite, albeit without Cronkite's exposure or widespread recognition. Here is part of Mr. Moyers' recent acceptance speech:

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Done.

Before his death I produced a documentary about him, and during our interview he told me the story of how he and his friend, Boots Cooper, were playing in the chicken house there in central Texas when they were about 12 years old. They spotted a chicken snake in the top tier of the nest, so close it looked like a boa constrictor. As John Henry told it, "All of our frontier courage drained out of our heels. Actually, it trickled down our overall legs. And Boots and I made a new door through the hen house." His momma came out to see what all of the fuss was about, and she said to Boots and John Henry, "Don't you know chicken snakes are harmless? They can't hurt you." Rubbing his forehead and his behind at the same time, Boots said, "Yes, Mrs. Faulk, I know, but they can scare you so bad you'll hurt yourself."

John Henry Faulk never forgot that lesson. I'm always ashamed when I do. Temptation to co-option is the original sin of journalism, and we're always finding fig leaves to cover it: economics, ideology, awe of authority, secrecy, the claims of empire. In the buildup to the invasion of Iraq we were reminded of what the late great reporter A.J. Liebling meant when he said the press is "the weak slat under the bed of democracy." The slat broke after the invasion and some strange bedfellows fell to the floor: establishment journalists, neo-con polemicists, beltway pundits, right-wing warmongers flying the skull and bones of the "balanced and fair brigade," administration flacks whose classified leaks were manufactured lies - all romping on the same mattress in the foreplay to disaster.

Five years, thousands of casualties, and hundreds of billion dollars later, most of the media co-conspirators caught in flagrante delicto are still prominent, still celebrated, and still holding forth with no more contrition than a weathercaster who made a wrong prediction as to the next day's temperature. The biblical injunction, "Go and sin no more," is the one we most frequently forget in the press. Collectively, we don't seem to learn that all it takes to transform an ordinary politician and a braying ass into the modern incarnation of Zeus and the oracle of Delphi is an oath on the Bible, a flag in the lapel, and the invocation of national security.

The rest of the speech is good as well. And, oh yeah, Bill Moyers is one of the few good things to ever come out of Texas, like Willie Nelson without the weed.

Note to journalism students: Listen to Moyers. Take his words to heart. Don't get to be complacent fat cats as you climb the ladder to success. Stay lean, stay focused on the mission: to dig out and disseminate the truth, corporate masters be damned, so that the media-compliant and -enabled disaster of the Bush years can never, say again never, be repeated. This country doesn't have any periods like that left in it.

Note to complacent fat cat corporate journalists: Same as above plus clean up your act and restart doing your jobs. You shoulder a lot of the blame for Bush's misdeeds and you have one helluva lot to make up for.