NEW YORK

I AM NOT SURE exactly what qualifies David A. Mittell Jr. to serve on The Journal’s editorial board, but I know that it did not equip him to judge the events of my life, as he did on your July 23 Commentary page in “The future of the newspapers.” A course in Journalism 101 might have prepared him to check his facts before making his judgments.

For example, Mr. Mittell writes that “even less known about Mr. Moyers is that, in 1954, the native Oklahoman went by the name of ‘Billy Don Moyers.’ His critics, of whom there are many, will love the implied makeover from good ol’ boy to today’s repository of wisdom. . . . ”

He’s right on one thing: I do indeed have many critics among Mr. Mittell’s right-wing friends, but, as he does here, they are always getting their facts wrong. I became “Bill” not in l954 but four years earlier, when on my 16th birthday I went to work as a cub reporter for my hometown newspaper, whose managing editor decided that “Billy Don” didn’t fit neatly into the space for a by-line. My mother loved both the name and the son to whom she had attached it, but she never complained publicly. To her dying day (at 91) she merely insisted on quietly calling me “Billy Don.” I don’t think she ever caught on to my double life as a “good ol’ boy.”

That little bit of snide sleight-of-hand by Mr. Mittell should be a warning flag to your readers to take his other assertions about me with a slight dose of skepticism. He wrongly states that “Mr. Moyers’s thesis,” in an article based on a speech I gave recently to a media-reform conference, “is that corporate media collude with democracy’s demise.” But that’s not a quote from me. It was by some headline writer. See for yourself by reading the speech at FreePress.net. You will find that I am talking specifically about the role of the dominant media in serving as a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq and for passing on to the American people as fact what were the administration’s unverified claims in the months leading up to the invasion. Mr. Mittell should take the advice of The Journal’s own veteran political columnist, M. Charles Bakst, and watch my PBS documentary Buying the War. This is what Mr. Bakst wrote:

“Here’s an assignment for every college or high school teacher of journalism, politics, marketing, or ethics. Make your students watch Bill Moyers Journal’s ‘Buying the War,’ a 90-minute documentary on the culpability of the news media in the Bush administration’s run-up to Iraq,” wrote Bakst. “In fact, every American should watch it, especially those, like me, who naïvely bought into a war sold on false pretenses and are outraged by its folly.”

So what did I say in the speech? This: “Sadly, the Fourth Estate became the Fifth Column of democracy, colluding with the powers-that-be in a ‘culture of deception,’ to quote Scott McClellan” (the White House press secretary at the time). Instead of quoting the speech, Mr. Mittell plucked a misleading headline from some source other than the speech. He would flunk a reporting class for doing that.

Speaking of PBS: Mr. Mittell refers to the fact that I work for “taxpayer-supported public broadcasting.” I would like to point out that PBS is indeed supported by “viewers like you” but that only around 17 percent of the system’s total budget comes via congressional appropriations. Furthermore, there is no public money in my weekly series Bill Moyers Journal; I raised all the funding myself from non-government sources.

One last point: Mr. Mittell’s remarks about me reveal something of the ideological orientation of the Republican right-wing noise machine that has hammered away at many journalists who do not report the world as they see it. “Those who have opposed President Bush on the Iraq war, or for his tax cuts, energy plans, or what-have-you — but particularly on the war,” Mr. Mittell wrote in an earlier column, “hate the man . . . ”

Sorry, Sir, I haven’t met George W. Bush, and I can’t hate someone I don’t know. Furthermore, I’ve long believed that hatred is a poison whose first victim is the hater, and it’s no way to spend your energy or your day. I do think the president took us to war on false premises, that his tax cuts have privileged the wealthy, and that his energy plan is to prolong our dependence on Middle Eastern potentates, monarchs, dictators, and Dick Cheney’s cronies at Haliburton, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, et al. But these conclusions based on the facts have nothing to do with anger or hate and everything to do with sadness at what this president’s policies are doing to America.

On one issue Mr. Mittell and I apparently see eye to eye (us good ol’ boys gotta stick together sometimes!): As journalism goes, so goes democracy, and what imperils one — newspapers above all (I started as a reporter on one and became the publisher of a second) — seriously imperils the other.

Bill Moyers is host of Bill Moyers Journal, on PBS, former publisher of Newsday and former press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson.