Mr. Moyers said he was unsure why PBS, where he has spent most of his career since 1971, declined the show for its main schedule. Some public television executives, who would not publicly comment on a sensitive issue, said they believed that PBS did not want to realign itself with Mr. Moyers, a longtime target of some conservatives, as it was fighting to keep its federal financing.

Perhaps PBS might consider a new, more accurate slogan: Not Offending Conservatives When We're Fighting for Funding, Which is Always.

In the piece, Moyers seems happy with the situation, saying that  "we don't have to worry about somebody at PBS losing sleep over the fact that David Stockman says the Republicans have lost their minds on taxes."

And Jensen adds:

His return comes as public television executives are debating their path: More Downton Abbey, or local and national news? So far, public affairs programming is losing. PBS canceled Now when Bill Moyers Journal ended; the replacement show Need to Know was recently trimmed from one hour to 30 minutes.

Yet, Mr. Moyers noted, PBS announced an additional version of Antiques Roadshow just a few weeks after the Census Bureau released figures showing the number of people living in poverty had risen to more than 46 million.

"I love Antiques Roadshow," he added. "But it is just symbolic of how we’re not connected viscerally to the state of the American people right now."

Interviewed for the  hour by anchors Any Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Moyers said,  "The consensual seduction of the mainstream media by and with the government is one of the most dangerous toxins at work in America today."

He spoke, too, of the lost mission of public broadcasting, and how its reliance on the political whims of Congress for some of its funding prevents it from living up to its potential:

Sometimes self-censorship occurs because you're looking over your shoulder, and you think, well, if I do this story or that story, it will hurt public broadcasting. Public broadcasting has suffered often for my sins, reporting stories the officials don't want reported. And today, only...a very small percentage of funding for NPR and PBS comes from the government. But that accounts for a concentration of pressure and self-censorship. And only when we get a trust fund, only when the public figures out how to support us independently of a federal treasury, will we flourish as an independent medium.

As he put it at one point: "The worst hour that I ever put on, was many years ago, with Henry Kissinger....  I vowed after that never to do an hour with any official. None."

Interviewing guests who challenge or question the conventional wisdom or the status quo is exactly what we should be seeing on public television. Two nights before the Moyers interview (5/30/11), Charlie Rose offered a reminder that we've got a long way to go.

He interviewed, for a whole hour, this guy:

Television, including public television, rarely gives a venue to people who have refused to buy into the ruling ideology of Washington. The ruling ideology of Washington is we have two parties, they do their job, they do their job pretty well. The differences between them limit the terms of the debate. But we know that real change comes from outside the consensus. Real change comes from people making history, challenging history, dissenting, protesting, agitating, organizing.

Those voices that challenge the ruling ideology--two parties, the best of all worlds, do a pretty good job--those voices get constantly pushed back to the areas of the stage you can’t see or hear. You got voices like those on your show. You got them on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! and a few other places like that, but not as a steady presence in the public discourse.

Later in the program came this exchange about the mission of public broadcasting:

Smiley: I say this--and this might be politically incorrect to say on PBS--but we are not living up to that charter. We're not living up to it on public television; we're not living up to it on public radio when it comes to a diversity and inclusion of other voices. We're not living up to that. So I wonder whether or not, in some ways, we deserve being pricked a little bit, pushed a little bit, if we're not living up to the charter, but you tell me.

Moyers: I don't think we’re living up to that charter that Lyndon Johnson proclaimed. No, I don't. The conservatives have won to this extent. Too many people in public television and public radio are looking over their shoulders, fearing that the right is after them. We don't really have a left in this country. There's no organized left that comes after journalists the way that the right comes after journalists who offer a different alternative.

This is an old story, Tavis. Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan, his communications director, tried to do it in public broadcasting back in the early '70s when they accused us of being liberal when, in fact, we were just offering an alternative view of reality, something they don’t want.

Then Bob Dole when he was Senate minority leader came after public broadcasting. Newt Gingrich came after public broadcasting and, of course, under the George W. Bush administration, you had a Republican Corporation for Public Broadcasting more responsive to Karl Rove than they were to the stations out here.

So that constant harassment creates a kind of caution and self-censorship on the part of people who just don't want to--you know, we don’t get but about 17 percent of the total budget from the Congress, but that's enough to leave a big hole in what the local stations do if we don't have it.

But it creates almost a Pavlovian response, and I think there is an unintended, but inevitable, censorship that takes place on the part of people who are running the programs, booking the programs, lining up guests, to make sure that we don't give the right wing another opportunity to come in and accuse us of being liberal.

Read FAIR's recent study of public television, or FAIR's response to the news about Jim Lehrer's semi-retirement.