Moyers responds to Slate column

Public television newsman Bill Moyers is speaking out in an email to the editor of Slate.com, complaining about a column by Slate writer Jack Shafer. Shafer's piece focused on a recent story in The Washington Post by reporter Joe Stephens that said Moyers, once a special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, asked the FBI to investigate the sexual orientation of two members of that administration. In the Post story, Moyers told Stephens that his memory was unclear on the incident. Moyers wrote in part to Slate: "Jack Shafer breathlessly reported very old news as new, and in a wholly irresponsible way that distorted the record beyond recognition. He bothered neither to check the secondhand sources on which he wholly relied nor to ask me for comment on them."