Saturday, June 28, 2025

A01937 -Bill Moyers, Respected Face of PBS

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Moyers in 1966
11th White House Press Secretary
In office
July 8, 1965 – February 1, 1967
PresidentLyndon B. Johnson
Preceded byGeorge Reedy
Succeeded byGeorge Christian
White House Chief of Staff
De facto
In office
October 14, 1964 – July 8, 1965
PresidentLyndon B. Johnson
Preceded byWalter Jenkins (de facto)
Succeeded byJack Valenti (de facto)
Personal details
Born
Billy Don Moyers

June 5, 1934
Hugo, Oklahoma, U.S.
DiedJune 26, 2025 (aged 91)
New York City, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse
Judith Davidson
 
​
(m. 1954)​
Children3
Education































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Billy Don Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025) was an American journalist and political commentator who served as the eleventh White House Press Secretary from 1965 to 1967 during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. He also served as the de facto White House Chief of Staff for a brief period from 1964 until 1965.

Moyers was a director of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1967 to 1974. He was also a onetime steering committee member of the annual Bilderberg Meeting. Moyers also worked as a network TV news commentator for ten years. Moyers was extensively involved with public broadcasting, producing documentaries and news journal programs, and won many awards and honorary degrees for his investigative journalism and civic activities. He was well known as a trenchant critic of the corporately structured U.S. news media.

Early years and education

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President Johnson (right) meets with special assistant Moyers in the White House Oval Office, 1963

Born Billy Don Moyers on June 5, 1934, in Hugo, Oklahoma, he was the son of John Henry Moyers, a laborer, and Ruby Johnson Moyers.[1][2] Moyers was reared in Marshall, Texas.[3]

Moyers began his journalism career at 16 as a cub reporter at the Marshall News Messenger.[2] In college, he studied journalism at the North Texas State College in Denton, Texas. In 1954, U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson employed him as a summer campaign intern and eventually promoted him to manage Johnson's personal mail.[2] Soon after, Moyers transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote for The Daily Texan newspaper. In 1956, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. While in Austin, Moyers served as assistant news editor for KTBC radio and television stations, owned by Lady Bird Johnson, Senator Johnson's wife. During the 1956–1957 academic year, he studied issues of church and state at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland as a Rotary International Fellow. In 1959, he completed a Master of Divinity degree at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.[3] Moyers served as Director of Information while attending SWBTS.[4] He was also a Baptist pastor in Weir, Texas, near Austin.[5]

Moyers planned to enter a Doctor of Philosophy program in American studies at the University of Texas. During Senator Johnson's unsuccessful bid for the 1960 Democratic U.S. presidential nomination, Moyers served as a top aide, and in the general campaign he acted as liaison between Democratic vice-presidential candidate Johnson and the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy.[6]

Kennedy and Johnson administrations

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The Peace Corps

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The Peace Corps was established by President Kennedy by Executive Order in March 1961, but it was up to top aide Sargent Shriver and Bill Moyers[7] to find the funding to actually establish the organization. The Peace Corps Act was signed by President Kennedy on September 22, 1961.[8] In Sarge, Scott Stossel reports that "Peace Corps legend has it that between them Moyers and Shriver personally called on every single member of Congress."[9]

Reflecting 25 years later on the creation of the program Moyers said: ”We knew from the beginning that the Peace Corps was not an agency, program, or mission. Now we know—from those who lived and died for it—that it is a way of being in the world."[10] At the 50th Anniversary “Salute to Peace Corps Giants”, hosted by the National Archives, Moyers said, "The years we spent at the Peace Corps were the best years of our lives.”[11] Moyers gave the same answer in the famed Vanity Fair Proust questionnaire in 2011.[12]

Moyers served first as associate director of public affairs and then as Sargent Shriver's deputy director before becoming special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson in November 1963.[13]

Corporation for Public Broadcasting

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Moyers was a key player in the creation of the public broadcasting system.[14] In 1961, FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow labeled television "a vast wasteland” and called for programming in the public interest. Years later, the Johnson administration instituted a study of the issue. The Carnegie Corporation of New York established a commission to study the value of and need for noncommercial educational television.[15] Moyers served on this committee, which released its report 'Public Television: A Program for Action' in 1967. Moyers said of the endeavor: “We became a central part of the American consciousness and a valuable institution within our culture."[16]

Moyers was influential in creating the legislation that would fulfill the committee's recommendations. In 1967, President Johnson[17] signed Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which states: "it is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of public radio and television broadcasting, including the use of such media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes."[citation needed]

On the 50th anniversary of the Public Broadcasting Act, Moyers and Joseph A. Califano, Jr. spoke about their experience with WNET.[18][19]

Johnson Administration

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When Lyndon B. Johnson took office after the Kennedy assassination, Moyers became a special assistant to Johnson, serving from 1963 to 1967. Moyers was the last surviving person identifiable in the photograph taken of Johnson's swearing in.[20] He played a key role in organizing and supervising the 1964 Great Society legislative task forces and was a principal architect of Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign. Moyers acted as the President's informal chief of staff from October 1964 until July 1965. From July 1965 to February 1967, he also served as White House press secretary.[6]

After the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Walter Jenkins because of a sexual misdemeanor in the run up to the 1964 election, President Lyndon B. Johnson, alarmed that the opposition was framing the issue as a security breach,[21] ordered Moyers to request FBI name checks on 15 members of Barry Goldwater's staff to find "derogatory" material on their personal lives.[22][23] Goldwater himself only referred to the Jenkins incident off the record.[24] The Church Committee stated in 1975 that "Moyers has publicly recounted his role in the incident, and his account is confirmed by FBI documents."[25] In 2005, Laurence Silberman wrote that Moyers denied writing the memo in a 1975 phone call, telling him the FBI had fabricated it.[26] Moyers said he had a different recollection of the telephone conversation.[27]

Moyers also sought information from the FBI on the sexual preferences of White House staff members, most notably Jack Valenti.[28] Moyers indicated his memory was unclear on why Johnson directed him to request such information, "but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover."[29]

Under the direction of President Johnson, Moyers gave J Edgar Hoover the go-ahead to discredit Martin Luther King, played a part in the wiretapping of King, discouraged the American embassy in Oslo from assisting King on his Nobel Peace Prize trip, and worked to prevent King from challenging the all-white Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention.[30]

Moyers approved (but had nothing to do with the production) of the infamous "Daisy Ad" against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign.[31] Goldwater blamed him for it, and once said of Moyers, "Every time I see him, I get sick to my stomach and want to throw up."[32] The advertisement is considered the starting point of the modern-day harshly negative campaign ad.[33]

Moyers giving a press conference at the White House in 1965

Journalist Morley Safer in his 1990 book Flashbacks wrote that Moyers and President Johnson met with and "harangued" Safer's boss, CBS president Frank Stanton, about Safer's coverage of the U.S. Marines torching Cam Ne village in the Vietnam War.[34] During the meeting, Safer alleges, Johnson threatened to expose Safer's "communist ties". This was a bluff, according to Safer. Safer says that Moyers was "if not a key player, certainly a key bystander" in the incident.[35] Moyers stated that his hard-hitting coverage of conservative presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush was behind Safer's 1990 allegations.[36]

In The New York Times on April 3, 1966, Moyers offered this insight on his stint as press secretary to President Johnson: "I work for him despite his faults and he lets me work for him despite my deficiencies."[37][38]

On May 18, 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara gave a speech in Montreal before the American Society of Newspaper Editors entitled Security in the Contemporary World, in which he criticized many aspects of U.S. defense policy. Lyndon Johnson was reportedly furious with McNamara's speech, and the discovery that Moyers had cleared it was a factor in Moyer's early departure.[39][40]

On October 17, 1967, Moyers told an audience in Cambridge that Johnson saw the war in Vietnam as his major legacy and, as a result, was insisting on victory at all costs, even in the face of public opposition. Moyers felt such a continuation of the conflict would tear the country apart. "I never thought the situation could arise when I would wish for the defeat of LBJ, and that makes my current state of mind all the more painful to me," he told them. "I would have to say now: It would depend on who his opponent is."[41]

The full details of his rift with Johnson were not made public.[42] However, an Oval Office tape which was recorded following Johnson's public announcement that he would not seek re-election on March 31, 1968, suggested that Moyers and Johnson were still in contact after Moyers left the White House, with Moyers even encouraging the President to change his mind about running.[43]

Journalism

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Newsday

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Moyers served as publisher for the Long Island, New York, daily newspaper Newsday from 1967 to 1970. The conservative publication had been unsuccessful,[44] but Moyers led the paper in a progressive direction,[45] bringing in leading writers such as Pete Hamill, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Saul Bellow, and adding new features and more investigative reporting and analysis. Circulation increased and the publication won 33 major journalism awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes.[44][46][47] But the owner of the paper, Harry Guggenheim, a conservative, was disappointed by the liberal drift of the newspaper under Moyers, criticizing the "left-wing" coverage of Vietnam War protests.[48][49] The two split over the 1968 presidential election, with Guggenheim signing an editorial supporting Richard Nixon, when Moyers supported Hubert Humphrey.[50] Guggenheim sold his majority share to the then-conservative Times-Mirror Company over the attempt of newspaper employees to block the sale, even though Moyers offered $10 million more than the Times-Mirror purchase price; Moyers resigned a few days later.[42][48][51][52]

CBS News

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In 1976, Moyers joined CBS News, where he worked as editor and chief correspondent for CBS Reports until 1981, then as senior news analyst and commentator for the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather from 1981 to 1986. He was the last regular commentator for the network broadcast.[53] During his last year at CBS, Moyers made public statements about declining news standards at the network[54] and declined to renew his contract with CBS, citing commitments with PBS.[55]

NBC News

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Moyers briefly joined NBC News in 1995 as a senior analyst and commentator, and the following year he became the first host of sister cable network MSNBC's Insight program. He was the last regular commentator on the NBC Nightly News.[53]

PBS

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Bill Moyers Journal (1972–1981)

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In 1971, Moyers began working for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). His first PBS series, titled This Week with Bill Moyers, aired in 1971 and 1972.[citation needed]

Bill Moyers Journal ran on PBS from 1972 until 1981 with a hiatus from 1976 to 1977. He later hosted a show with this title from 2007 to 2010.[56]

In 1975, Bill Moyers Journal aired Rosedale: The Way It Is,[57] documenting the furor that arose after the first black family moved into Rosedale, Queens, including a rash of firebombings. In 2020, a graduate student drew attention to a short segment that had recorded the reactions of a group of black girls who attempted to make sense of the incident they had experienced. The New York Times later found the children and others featured in the documentary and produced its own reported feature: "A Racist Attack on Children Was Taped in 1975. We Found Them."[58]

Individual programs (1982–2006)

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From 1982 through 2006, 70 different documentaries, interviews or limited series produced and hosted by Moyers ran on PBS stations.[59]

Individuals interviewed and profiled included:[citation needed]

Moyers also hosted a six-part interview series called Creativity in 1982 and a 42-part interview series A World of Ideas from 1988–1990 which featured a companion book.[60]

Topics of Moyers broadcasts included:

  • History – A Walk Through the 20th Century (1982–1984), From D-Day to the Rhine (1990), The Power of the Past: Florence (1990), The Arab World (1991), Presenting Mr. Frederick Douglass (1994)[citation needed]
  • Religion – Heritage Conversations (1986), God and Politics (1987), Amazing Grace (1990), The New Holy War (1993), Genesis: A Living Conversation (1996),[61] Faith and Reason (2006)
  • Morality – Facing Evil (1988), Beyond Hate (1991), Hate on Trial (1992), Facing the Truth (1999)[citation needed]
  • Politics – In Search of the Constitution (1987), The Home Front (1991), Money Talks (1994), Trading Democracy (2002), Capitol Crimes (2006)[citation needed]
  • The media – The Public Mind (1989), Project Censored (1991), Free Speech for Sale (1999), The Net at Risk (2006)[citation needed]
  • Contemporary events such as the Iran–Contra affair (The Secret Government, 1987), 1988 presidential election (Election '88), 1992 presidential election (Listening to America) and the 9/11 attacks (Moyers in Conversation)[citation needed]
  • Healthcare – Circle of Recovery (1991), Healing and the Mind (1993), The Great Healthcare debate (1994), Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home (1998),[62] On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying (2000)[63]
  • Poetry[64] – The Power of the Word (1989), The Language of Life (1995), Fooling with Words (1999), Sounds of Poetry (1999)
  • The environment – Spirit and Nature (1991), Trade Secrets (2001), Earth on Edge (2001), America's First River (2003), Is God Green? (2006)[citation needed]
  • Money – Sports for sale (1991), Minimum Wages: The New Economy (1992), Bullish on America (1993), Surviving the Good Times (2000)[65]
  • Youth issues – All Our Children (1991), Families First (1992), Solutions to Violence (1995), Children in America's Schools (1996)[citation needed]
  • Immigration – Becoming American (2003)[citation needed]

These were often produced by Moyers and his wife, Judith Suzanne Davidson Moyers, through Public Affairs Television, a company they formed in 1986. Other collaborators included filmmaker David Grubin and producer Madeline Amgott.[66]

Frontline (1990–1999)

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Between 1990 and 1999, Moyers produced and hosted 7 episodes of the PBS journalism program Frontline:[citation needed]

  • Global Dumping Ground (1990) on toxic waste
  • Springfield Goes to War (1990) on the debate around the Gulf War
  • High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1990) on the Iran–Contra affair
  • In Our Children's Food (1993) on pesticides
  • Living on the Edge (1995) on the economy
  • Washington's Other Scandal (1998) on campaign finance
  • Justice for Sale (1999) on judicial elections

NOW with Bill Moyers and Wide Angle (2002–2005)

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Moyers hosted the TV news journal NOW with Bill Moyers on PBS for three years, starting in January 2002. He retired from the program on December 17, 2004, but returned to PBS soon after to host Wide Angle in 2005. When he left NOW, he announced that he wished to finish writing a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson.[67]

Bill Moyers Journal (2007–2010)

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On April 25, 2007, Moyers returned to PBS with Bill Moyers Journal. In the first episode, "Buying the War", Moyers investigated what he called the general media's shortcomings in the runup to the War in Iraq.[68] "Buying the War" won an Emmy at the 29th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards (2008) for Best Report in a News Magazine.[69][70]

On November 20, 2009, Moyers announced that he would be retiring from his weekly show on April 30, 2010.[71]

Moyers & Company (2012–2015)

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Moyers in 2017

In August 2011, Moyers announced a new hour-long weekly interview show, Moyers & Company, which premiered in January 2012.[72] In that same month, Moyers also launched BillMoyers.com. Later reduced to a half hour, Moyers & Company was produced by Public Affairs Television and distributed by American Public Television.[73] The show has been heralded as a renewed fulfillment of public media's stated mission to air news and views unrepresented or underrepresented in commercial media.[74]

The program concluded on January 2, 2015.[75]

Moyers on Democracy podcast

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In 2020, Moyers started a series of podcasts named Moyers on Democracy. Conversations included Lisa Graves on the Post Office conflict; Heather Cox Richardson on How the South Won the Civil War; Heather McGhee on racism's pernicious effect on American society and Bill T. Jones on his newest project — a retelling of Moby Dick from the viewpoint of a Black cabin boy. The series ended in early 2021.[76]

Awards

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In 1995, Bill Moyers was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.[77] The same year, he also won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.[78] When he became a recipient of the 2006 Lifetime Emmy Award, the official announcement noted that “Bill Moyers has devoted his lifetime to the exploration of the major issues and ideas of our time and our country, giving television viewers an informed perspective on political and societal concerns," and that "The scope of and quality of his broadcasts have been honored time and again. It is fitting that the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honor him with our highest honor—the Lifetime Achievement Award."[79] He had received twenty-six Emmy nominations, thirteen wins, and virtually every other major television journalism prize, including a gold baton from the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, a Peabody Award[80] and a George Polk Career Award (his third George Polk Award) for contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Philosophical Society,[81] and has been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, including a doctorate from the American Film Institute.[3] In 2011, Moyers received the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Whittier College.[82]

Media criticism

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In a 2003 interview with BuzzFlash.com, Moyers said, "The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they've won." He noted, "The rich are getting richer, which arguably wouldn't matter if the rising tide lifted all boats." Instead, however, "[t]he inequality gap is the widest it's been since 1929; the middle class is besieged and the working poor are barely keeping their heads above water." He added that as "the corporate and governing elites are helping themselves to the spoils of victory," access to political power has become "who gets what and who pays for it."[83]

Meanwhile, the public has failed to react because it is, in his words, "distracted by the media circus and news has been neutered or politicized for partisan purposes." In support of this, he referred to "the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero. ... As Eric Alterman reports in his recent book—a book that I'm proud to have helped make happen—part of the red-meat strategy is to attack mainstream media relentlessly, knowing that if the press is effectively intimidated, either by the accusation of liberal bias or by a reporter's own mistaken belief in the charge's validity, the institutions that conservatives revere—corporate America, the military, organized religion, and their own ideological bastions of influence—will be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence over American public life with relatively no challenge."[83]

When he briefly retired in December 2004, the AP News Service quoted Moyers as saying, "I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."[84]

Presidential draft initiative

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On July 24, 2006, liberal political commentator Molly Ivins published an article entitled Run Bill Moyers for President, Seriously, urging a symbolic candidacy, on the progressive website Truthdig.[85][86][87] The call was taken up in October 2006 by Ralph Nader.[88] Moyers did not run.

Conflict with CPB over content

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In 2003, Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson wrote to Pat Mitchell, the president of PBS, that NOW with Bill Moyers "does not contain anything approaching the balance the law requires for public broadcasting."[89] In 2005, Tomlinson commissioned a study of the show, without informing or getting authorization from the CPB board.[90] The study was conducted by Fred Mann, Tomlinson's choice, a 20-year veteran of the American Conservative Union and a conservative columnist. Like the study itself, Mann's appointment was not disclosed to the CPB.[91]

Tomlinson said that the study supported what he characterized as "the image of the left-wing bias of NOW".[92] George Neumayr, the executive editor of The American Spectator, a conservative magazine, told the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that "PBS looks like a liberal monopoly to me, and Bill Moyers is Exhibit A of that very strident, left-wing bias... [Moyers] uses his show as a platform from which to attack conservatives and Republicans."[89]

The Reporters Committee on the Freedom of the Press was vocal about the danger of the CPB chairman interfering with programming independence.[93] The PBS Ombudsman and the Free Press noted that a poll taken in 2003 by the CPB itself found that 80 percent of Americans believe PBS to be "fair and balanced."[94] In a speech given to The National Conference for Media Reform, Moyers said that he had repeatedly invited Tomlinson to have a televised conversation with him on the subject but had been ignored.[95]

On November 3, 2005, Tomlinson resigned from the board, prompted by a report of his tenure by the CPB Inspector General Kenneth Konz, requested by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The report, which found that Tomlinson violated the Director's Code of Ethics and the statutory provisions of the CPB and PBS, was made public on November 15. It states:[citation needed]

We found evidence that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) former Chairman violated statutory provisions and the Director's Code of Ethics by dealing directly with one of the creators of a new public affairs program during negotiations with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the CPB over creating the show. Our review also found evidence that suggests "political tests" were a major criteria [sic] used by the former Chairman in recruiting a President/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for CPB, which violated statutory prohibitions against such practices.

In 2006, the PBS Ombudsman, whose role was reinvigorated by the controversy published a column entitled "He's Back: Moyers, not Tomlinson." Reflecting on the conflict, Moyers told The Boston Globe: "It's a place where if you fight you can survive, but it's not easy. The fact of the matter is that Kenneth Tomlinson had a chilling effect down the line."[96]

Organizations

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Moyers was a onetime director of the Council on Foreign Relations[97] (1967–1974), a onetime steering committee member of the Bilderberg Group,[98] and from 1990 was president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.[99]

Personal life

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Moyers at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2018

Moyers married Judith Suzanne Davidson (a producer) on December 18, 1954. They had three children and five grandchildren.[100]

His daughter, Suzanne Moyers, a former teacher and editor, is the author of the historical novel, ‘Til All These Things Be Done.[100]

His son William Cope Moyers (CNN producer, Hazelden Foundation spokesman for addiction recovery) struggled to overcome alcoholism and crack addiction as detailed in the book Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption. He included letters from Bill Moyers in his book, which he said are "a testament to a father's love for his son, a father's confusion with his son, and ultimately, a father's satisfaction with his son".[101] Later, he struggled with prescription opioid addiction and his use of both Suboxone medication and traditional addiction recovery methods such as prayer and twelve-step meetings, as he described in a second book, Broken Open: What Painkillers Taught Me About Life and Recovery.[102]

His other son, John Moyers, assisted in the foundation of TomPaine.com, "an online public affairs journal of progressive analysis and commentary".[103]

Moyers lived in Bernardsville, New Jersey, from 2003 to 2016.[104]

Death

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On June 26, 2025, Moyers died in a hospital in Manhattan from complications relating to prostate cancer.[100] He was 91.

On news of his death, Press Watch editor Dan Froomkin called Moyers "one of the greatest of the greats." The Nation's John Nichols commented that "the modern media reform movement —with its commitment to diversity, to equity, and to defending the sort of speak-truth-to-power reporting that exposes injustice, inequality, authoritarianism, and militarism— was made possible by Bill's courageous advocacy during the Bush-Cheney years. He raised the banner and we rallied around it." Senator Bernie Sanders stated that "a friend, public servant, and outstanding journalist, has passed away. As an aide to President Johnson, Bill pushed the presidency in a more progressive direction. As a journalist, he had the courage to explore issues that many ignored."[105]

Published works

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See also

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References

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Citations

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  1. ^ "Mimi Swartz, " The Mythic Rise of Billy Don Moyers: From Marshall, Texas, he set off on a heroic journey: to become LBJ's protégé, the conscience of TV news, and the prophet of a brand-new faith," November 1989". Texas Monthly. Retrieved March 7, 2014.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c Scott, Janny (June 26, 2025). "Bill Moyers, a Face of Public TV and Once a White House Voice, Dies at 91". The New York Times. Retrieved June 26, 2025.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c "Bill Moyers". The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved May 15, 2008.
  4. ^ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-mythic-rise-of-billy-don-moyers/
  5. ^ https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/bill-moyers-dead-pbs-journalist-1236442118/
  6. ^ Jump up to:a b "Bill Moyers Biographical Note". LBJ Library and Museum. Archived from the original on July 13, 2007. Retrieved June 7, 2007.
  7. ^ Mark the Moment! Peace Corps anniversary discussion, marking the 60th anniversary down to the minute, September 22, 2021, retrieved January 8, 2022
  8. ^ https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/peace-corps
  9. ^ Pearson, Jonathan. "Let's Climb This Hill Together". World View. National Peace Corps Association.
  10. ^ "Bill Moyers Says It All At The 25th Anniversary Conference | Peace Corps Worldwide". peacecorpsworldwide.org. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  11. ^ "Salute to Peace Corps Giants | C-SPAN.org". www.c-span.org. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  12. ^ "Proust Questionnaire: Bill Moyers". Vanity Fair. June 1, 2011. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  13. ^ Coverdell, Paul D. (June 2003). "Voices From the Field" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on December 31, 2015.
  14. ^ "Public Broadcasting Turns 50". Carnegie Corporation of New York. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
  15. ^ https://www.cpb.org/AboutCPB/History-Timeline
  16. ^ https://www.carnegie.org/news/articles/public-broadcasting-turns-50/
  17. ^ "President Johnson's Remarks". www.cpb.org. January 14, 2015. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
  18. ^ "Preserving Public Broadcasting at 50 Years". Library of Congress. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
  19. ^ "Bill Moyers and Joseph A. Califano, Jr. Discuss the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967". YouTube. Thirteen PBS. Retrieved June 28, 2025.
  20. ^ terHorst, Jerald; Albertazzie, Col. Ralph (1979). The Flying White House. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. p. 225. ISBN 0-698-10930-9.
  21. ^ Johnson, David K. (2004). The Lavender Scare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 197. ISBN 0-226-40481-1.
  22. ^ "US Dept Justice FBI Investigation 1975". USDOJ. 1975. Retrieved May 10, 2008.
  23. ^ Hoover's men ran name checks on 15 of them, producing derogatory information on two (a traffic violation on one and a love affair on another) "Hoover's Political Spying for Presidents, TIME, 1975 "
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Bill Moyers, a Face of Public TV and Once a White House Voice, Dies at 91

He was a renowned television correspondent and commentator who also had long ties with Lyndon B. Johnson, including as his press secretary.

By Janny Scott

Bill Moyers, who served as chief spokesman for President Lyndon B. Johnson during the American military buildup in Vietnam and then went on to a long and celebrated career as a broadcast journalist, returning repeatedly to the subject of the corruption of American democracy by money and power, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 91.

His son William Cope Moyers confirmed the death, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He lived in Manhattan.

To Americans who grew up after the 1960s, Mr. Moyers was known above all as an unusual breed of television correspondent and commentator. He was once described by Peter J. Boyer, the journalist and author, as “a rare and powerful voice, a kind of secular evangelist.”

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But before that, Mr. Moyers was President Johnson’s closest aide. Present on Air Force One in Dallas when Johnson took the oath of office after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Mr. Moyers played a pivotal role in the inception of Johnson’s Great Society programs, and was the president’s top administrative assistant and press secretary when Johnson sent hundreds of thousands of troops to fight in the Vietnam War.

ImageA black-and-white photo of the two men standing side by side. Mr. Moyers is looking directly at the president; the president is looking down at something.
Mr. Moyers with President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, when he was Johnson’s press secretary. Mr. Moyers for many years was Johnson’s closest aide.Credit...Corbis, via Getty Images

Mr. Moyers resigned from the administration in December 1966 at age 32, finalizing an irreparable falling out between the hot-tempered, flamboyant Johnson, who demanded unwavering loyalty, and the cool, self-contained Mr. Moyers, whom Johnson had denied several foreign policy positions. The two men never reconciled. In his 1971 memoir, “The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969,” Johnson mentioned Mr. Moyers only fleetingly, reducing him to little more than a footnote.

In his four decades as a television correspondent and commentator, Mr. Moyers, an ordained Baptist minister, explored issues ranging from poverty, violence, income inequality and racial bigotry to the role of money in politics, threats to the Constitution and climate change. His documentaries and reports won him the top prizes in television journalism, more than 30 Emmy Awards and comparisons to Edward R. Murrow, his revered predecessor at CBS.

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A black-and-white publicity photo of four men in suits.
Mr. Moyers, left, covered the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Mo., for CBS, along with, clockwise, Morton Dean, Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite.Credit...CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

In an age of broadcast blowhards, the soft-spoken Mr. Moyers applied his earnest, deferential style to interviews with poets, philosophers and educators, often on the subject of values and ideas. His 1988 PBS series, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth,” drew 30 million viewers, posthumously turned Mr. Campbell — at the time a little-known mythologist — into a public broadcasting star, and popularized the Campbell dictum “Follow your bliss.”

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To admirers, many of them liberals, Mr. Moyers was the nation’s conscience, bringing to his work what one television critic called “a sense of moral urgency and decency.” Others, mostly conservatives, found him sanctimonious and accused him of bias. In a 2004 retrospective, the conservative website FrontPageMag.com called him a “sweater-wearing pundit who delivered socialist and neo-Marxist propaganda with a soft Texas accent.”

Famously modest and self-deprecating, Mr. Moyers often invoked his humble small-town roots in Marshall, Texas. Yet he was ambitious, political, intense and shrewd. His Rolodex was once said to contain the names of every important person who ever lived, but he emphasized the importance of speaking to, for and about “regular people.” He could draw anyone out — from psychiatric patients to Supreme Court justices.

But he resisted opening up about himself. He occasionally spoke about his Johnson years, but he never consented to be interviewed by Robert A. Caro, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who has spent more than 40 years on his five-volume Johnson biography.

“By all accounts, despite his soft, East Texas style, he is one of the most complicated men that politics or the media ever produced,” the journalist Ann Crittenden wrote in a 1981 profile for Channels magazine titled “The Perplexing Mr. Moyers.”

Billy Don Moyers was born on June 5, 1934, in Hugo, Okla., the younger of two sons of John and Ruby (Johnson) Moyers. His father was an unskilled laborer.

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The family moved to Marshall, near the Louisiana border, when Billy was 6 months old. Taking a summer job on a newspaper while still in school, he sliced the ‘y’ off his byline, deciding that the name sounded more dignified without it.

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A young Mr. Moyers sits at a desk, his arms folded on the surface, and looks to his left. His glasses are on top of the desk.
Mr. Moyers in an undated photo. “By all accounts,” a fellow journalist once wrote, “he is one of the most complicated men that politics or the media ever produced.”Credit...George Tames/The New York Times

His Baptist parents dreamed that he would become a minister. “Our parents wanted so deeply for us to make some kind of mark,” Mr. Moyers’s brother, James, once said. But Mr. Moyers took a different path. He worked for The Marshall News Messenger in high school and later credited its publisher, Millard Cope, with encouraging his interest in public affairs. He went on to study journalism, government, history, theology and ethics in, he said, “deliberate preparation for a career in public service.”

He majored in journalism at North Texas State College in Denton, where he was elected class president two years running. In his second year, he wrote to Lyndon Johnson, then the majority leader of the United States Senate, and landed a summer job as an assistant on his 1954 campaign. Johnson persuaded Mr. Moyers to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin and take a job at a radio station owned by Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird. Mr. Moyers graduated in 1956 with honors.

After studying religious history on a fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, he spent two years at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, preaching on weekends. At 25, he was an ordained minister.

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Mr. Moyers accepted a job teaching Christian ethics at Baylor University in Waco, then changed his plans after Johnson asked him to be his personal assistant on his 1960 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Soon he was Johnson’s executive assistant, and he seemed to be running the campaign. But after Johnson lost the nomination to John F. Kennedy, became his running mate and was elected vice president, Mr. Moyers asked to resign so that he could work on plans for the Peace Corps, a new Kennedy initiative. James H. Rowe Jr., a Johnson friend, in a letter to the Peace Corps director, R. Sargent Shriver, praised Mr. Moyers as “that curious and very rare blend of idealist-operator.”

Mr. Moyers supervised the drafting of the legislation that created the Peace Corps, then squired Mr. Shriver around Capitol Hill, persuading skeptical members of Congress to pass it. He designed the agency’s recruiting, community relations and congressional relations programs. At 28, he became the second in command of the Peace Corps, doing work that he later said was the most satisfying of his life — developing “an idealistic dream” into “an effective program.”

On Nov. 22, 1963, he was in Austin, Texas, when he heard that President Kennedy had been shot. He chartered a plane to Dallas, where he learned that Johnson was on Air Force One. Stopped by a security agent at the stateroom door, he wrote a note to Johnson: “I’m here if you need me.”

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The well-known somber black-and-white photo, with Johnson and the two women in the foreground.
Mr. Moyers (against the wall, at the rear right) was aboard Air Force One when Vice President Johnson was sworn in as president after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. With Johnson were his wife, Lady Bird, left, and Jacqueline Kennedy.Credit...Universal History Archive, via Getty Images

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He flew back to Washington with Johnson. “I’m just here helping a friend,” he professed to a reporter that week, “and when that ends, I’ll drift away and never be heard of again.”

He worked with Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorensen to craft Johnson’s first statements to the country, and became the link between the Johnson and Kennedy circles. As the Johnson era began, Mr. Moyers’ familiarity with the bureaucracy helped him organize and guide the 14 task forces of government officials and outside experts that produced most of the Great Society domestic legislation.

His Great Society role was what one friend called his “finest hour.” He overcame the doubts of East Coast intellectuals about Johnson, melded that group with the best of the bureaucracy, enabled continuing communication with the academic community, and, Patrick Anderson noted in his book “The President’s Men” (1968), made sure that the process produced “a coherent program flowing from a central philosophy.”

During the 1964 presidential campaign, when Johnson faced Senator Barry M. Goldwater, the Republican nominee, Mr. Moyers oversaw the creation of one of the most notorious attack ads ever, the “Daisy Girl” commercial. In it, a child plucked petals from a daisy as the sound of her counting dissolved into the sound of a countdown and as images of a nuclear explosion filled the screen.

The commercial, implying that Mr. Goldwater could not be trusted with the country’s nuclear arsenal in an international crisis, was widely criticized and pulled from the air after a single showing. But many believed the damage had been done: Its impact was magnified by news coverage and commentary about it in the weeks and months that followed.

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In July 1965, with the escalation of American military involvement in Vietnam underway and Johnson’s relationship with the press deteriorating, the president added the job of press secretary to Mr. Moyers’s responsibilities.

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A black-and-white photo of Mr. Moyers, standing at a table, surrounded by reporters with notebooks, most of them also standing.
Mr. Moyers spoke to reporters in August 1965 in his capacity as White House press secretary.Credit...William J. Smith/Associated Press

Many in the news media were impressed. Tom Wicker, The New York Times’s Washington bureau chief, called Mr. Moyers “the most able and influential presidential assistant I have ever seen or read about.” Writing in The Washington Monthly in 1974, James Fallows said that Mr. Moyers, “intentionally or not,” had “helped to postpone the tide of criticism which finally drove Johnson out of office.”

But Mr. Moyers resigned in late 1966, citing family obligations. His admiring notices had begun to wear on the president, and he had been denied two foreign policy jobs that he reportedly wanted.

In 1967, he became publisher of Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper. He strengthened the paper’s Washington coverage, added international bureaus and hired Saul Bellow to cover the 1967 Mideast war. The paper won two Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure. But its conservative owner, Harry F. Guggenheim, said to be annoyed by the “left wingers” running the paper, sold his majority share in 1970, having turned down a higher offer from Mr. Moyers, who resigned.

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At the suggestion of friends, Mr. Moyers embarked on a 13,000-mile bus trip, a tape recorder and a notebook in hand, “to hear people speak for themselves,” as he put it. The dispatch that resulted — a rumination on race, economic power, police-community relations, health care, the environment, unemployment, the media — filled almost an entire issue of Harper’s Magazine. Drawing on that article, he wrote “Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country” (1971), the first of many best-selling books.

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Wearing a maroon sweater, he sits with his left hand on his hip and his chin resting on his right hand. A sign with the word “Now” is on the wall behind him.
Mr. Moyers when he was the host of the weekly PBS newsmagazine "Now,'' one of his last jobs in television.Credit...Robin Holland/Public Affairs Television, via Associated Press

Mr. Moyers turned down offers to edit newspapers, run colleges and co-host the “Today” show on NBC. (“I just didn’t like the idea of selling dog food in a world where so many people were eating it,” he told People magazine.) Instead, he began producing a weekly public affairs program on PBS, devoting entire shows to topics like the Watergate scandal and public education. John J. O’Connor of The Times called his show, “Bill Moyers Journal,” “one of the most outstanding series on television.”

In 1976, said to be frustrated by the limited resources in public television, Mr. Moyers joined CBS, the top commercial network, as chief correspondent for the documentary program “CBS Reports.” He produced documentaries on subjects ranging from arson in the South Bronx to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. But he objected to the show’s irregular schedule: To have more impact, he said, the documentaries needed to appear more often, with more promotion and in better time slots. Rebuffed, he returned to PBS.

Three years later, he was back at CBS, this time as the commentator on the evening news, with something close to a promise of a public affairs program of his own. When he found himself steered onto shows that he considered shallow and commercial, he left again.

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“The line between entertainment and news was steadily blurred,” Mr. Moyers told Newsweek. “Our center of gravity shifted from the standards and practices of the news business to show business.”

He returned once again to PBS with $15 million in grants and his own production company, Public Affairs Television. His wife, Judith Davidson Moyers, whom he had met in his freshman year in college and married in 1954, became president of the company in 1988 and was executive producer of many of his documentaries.

She survives him. In addition to her and his son William, Mr. Moyers is survived by two other children, Suzanne and John Moyers; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

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He and his wife are seated in chairs. The two youngest children are sitting in their laps; the oldest child is standing.
Mr. Moyers at his home in Virginia in 1966 with his wife, Judith, and their children, from left, Suzanne, John and William.Credit...Associated Press

Mr. Moyers’s six hourlong interviews with Joseph Campbell, who died in 1987, shortly before they aired, were among the first productions made by the new company. Tens of thousands of videotapes of the interviews were sold, and viewers formed study groups to watch them. A companion book — championed by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was then an editor at Doubleday — became a best seller, as did earlier books by Mr. Campbell.

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Between the late 1980s and 2007, Mr. Moyers and Public Affairs Television turned out nearly 100 documentaries and reports. The subject of one five-part series in 1998 was addiction, a problem with which the Mr. Moyers’ eldest son, William, had struggled. “Bill Moyers Journal” returned to the air from 2007 to 2010, starting with an investigation of the shortcomings of the news media in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

In 2012, when he was in his late 70s, Mr. Moyers launched an hourlong weekly interview show, “Moyers & Company,” with funding from major foundations, including the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. The show aired on public television and radio stations nationwide.

Eight years earlier, Mr. Moyers had seemed for a moment to be retiring. Journalists had stopped by to write about the final episode of “Now,” the weekly PBS newsmagazine show that he had hosted for two years. Emerging from the editing room to speak to a reporter, he said, “Maybe finally I’ve broken the habit.”

Apparently, he hadn’t. He finally retired in January 2015, at the age of 80.

Ama Sarpomaa contributed reporting.

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