This morning Bill Moyers kicked off day two of the National Conference for Media Reform, calling on the nearly 3,500 participants to step up, speak up, and take the message of this conference into the streets of America.

"You are not alone," said Moyers, "and you know what we need to know. So go tell it on the mountains, and in the cities, from your websites and lap tops, tell it from the street corners and coffeehouse."

Instead of real investigative journalism rooted in local community concerns, Big Media has given us cookie-cutter programming, sensationalism, and celebrity gossip, according to Moyers.

The veteran journalist attacked money-driven media conglomerates whose end goal is making a profit, not serving the public. As policy decisions in Washington DC have allowed more and more consolidation, media giants have slashed jobs and gutted newsrooms leaving a media controlled by "Corporate boards whose mission is not the support of life and liberty but rather corporate aggrandizement."

For Moyers, the end result is a media that no longer tells us what we need to know.

We rely on the media to give us the information we need to be active citizens, to hold our government accountable, and to engage in our local community.

Fewer media owners means fewer perspectives in the media, and a decrease in the diversity of information we receive. This gives a few people a huge amount of power to shape the national debate over some of the most pressing issues of our time like global warming, the war in Iraq, and the state of the economy.

How, Moyers asked, can we make informed choices and grapple with the issues facing our local community if our news is imported from out of state and driven by the demands of Wall Street, not Main Street?

And it is not just broadcast media that Moyers is concerned about. The future of our media, and the future of our democracy, is bound up in the future of our internet.

We are at a moment when the consolidation that has devastated traditional journalism is beginning to threaten the free and open internet. The same bottom-line mentality, that sees critical information as a revenue stream instead of the life blood of our democracy, is on the verge of fundamentally altering the nature of the internet.

"Be vigilant," Moyers warned, "the fate of the cyber commons is up for grabs here. Wherever the Internet flows we must assure that it remains open and nondiscriminatory."

But in the end, Moyers made it clear that while we are at a troubling and dangerous moment, we are also poised to launch an unprecedented movement to take back our media.

Together, Moyers argued, we can help create the bonds of "we the people." He pointed to the incredible successes of campaigns like StopBigMedia.com and SaveTheInternet.com, led by Free Press and supported by millions of people across the country as an example of the unparallel potential of citizen action. “Your vigorous protest rocked the cozy confines of the mainstream media,” said Moyers.

Asking the audience to stand and introduce themselves to the people around them in the auditorium, Moyers reminded the audience that together we are an unstoppable force that can overcome the money, power, and influence of Big Media lobbyists in our statehouses and in Washington DC.

"It is up to you to fight for the freedom that makes all other freedoms possible,” he said and called on the audience to "tell America what we need to know and rekindle the patriot dream!"