How close you are to reality

The above is lifted from a speech by Bill Moyers after he was awarded the Courage Prize among the Ridenhour Prize awards on April 3. You may read it all here.

After my government experience, it took me a while to get my footing back in journalism. I had to learn all over again that what is important for the journalist is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality. Over the last forty years, I would find that reality in assignment after assignment, from covering famine in Africa and war in Central America to inner-city families trapped in urban ghettos and middle-class families struggling to survive in an era of downsizing across the heartland. I also had to learn one of journalism's basic lessons. The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.

Makes one very wistful.

Congratulations, Mr. Moyers. You are one of my heroes.

h/t to Truthout
--the BB