Bill Moyers obit

Bill Moyers Dies: Influential Public Media Journalist And Commentator And Former White House Press Secretary Was 91

 

He was not on the list.

Bill Moyers, who followed a tenure as a young top aide to Lyndon Johnson with a long career as a much-acclaimed journalist and commentator on public broadcasting, died Thursday in New York. He was 91.

The cause was complications from prostate cancer, his son, William Cope Moyers, told the Washington Post.

His shows, including Now with Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal and Moyers & Company, were insightful, in-depth and often hard-hitting about the state of current events, a contrast to the attention-grabbing aspects of corporate media. He covered topics like race, the environment, religion, poetry, the arts, interviewing everyday Americans, with his soft voice and thought-provoking questions, capturing stories that often couldn’t get the airtime on commercial broadcast networks.

Having founded his own production company in 1986, Moyers’ productions included Healing and the Mind, The Language of Life, Genesis, On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying, Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home and America’s First River. Few were as enduring as Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, a 1988 series with the author, a mythologist and storyteller. A book tied to the six-episode series became a bestseller.

Moyers stepped away from his digital venture in 2017, telling audiences to “please remain vigilant and engaged as citizens in the civic and political life of your community and our country. Democracy is fragile, and no one can say with certainty that it can withstand the manifold risks to which it is now exposed.”

Paula Kerger, the president of PBS, said in a statement, “Not only was Bill a journalist of the highest caliber, he played an essential role in the creation of PBS as a trusted aide to President Johnson. It was my privilege to work closely with him for over three decades, and I was always inspired by the clarity of his vision and his unwavering commitment to the ideals that continue to inspire public media.

She added, “Bill was always of service: as a journalist, a mentor, and a fierce champion for PBS. He fought for excellence and honesty in our public discourse, and was always willing to take on the most important issues of the day with curiosity and compassion. While he will be greatly missed, we will continue to carry his legacy forward in service to the American people.”

Raised in Texas, Moyers started his journalism career at 16, reporting for his hometown paper in Marshall.

In a 2023 interview with Judy Woodruff at the Library of Congress, Moyers recalled that his father buying an old radio when World War II broke out, to listen to broadcasts from Edward R. Murrow.

“Something about Murrow…Something about Eric Sevareid, got under my skin. I went to work shortly thereafter at the newspaper as a cub reporter,” Moyers told Woodruff.

Moyers, though, took a departure to get a theological degree, but his tenure as a minister was short.

As he prepared to move to Austin where he was going to teach, he got a call from Johnson, as Moyers had worked on his senatorial campaign and as an intern in 1954. Johnson was preparing to run for president in 1960, and ended up serving as a liaison between his campaign and that of John F. Kennedy.

It was the start of a career in politics and public service.

Moyers was a founding organizer and deputy director of the Peace Corps, and later served as special assistant to Johnson when he became president. Moyers served as White House press secretary from 1965-1967.

During his tenure with Johnson, Moyers also played a major role in the creation of public broadcasting, working with a 15-member commission that led to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. “There was great enthusiasm about the unprecedented support to create the first non-commercial television channel at a time television had not fully come of age,” Moyers told Carnegie Corporation retrospective on the act’s 50th anniversary. “We became a central part of the American consciousness and a valuable institution within our culture.”

Moyers went on to become the publisher of Newsday, bringing aboard such writers as Saul Bellow and Pete Hamill, and the publication won two Pulitzers. But the paper sold, and he was left without a job.

Moyers later recalled that, by chance, he ran into Bill Kobin, who had just left ABC for a post leading news and public affairs at WNET. “He said, ‘Moyers, you’re a good listener. I got a job for you.'” They were starting a show called This Week, he recalled, and “I spent the next three years listening to America. All levels, all kinds…And that just flowed into my pores. Stories flowed into me from other people, from what I read and what I saw, and I just decided I would spend my life asking questions.”

In the 1976 documentary Rosedale: The Way It Is, went in depth on a series of violent in Queens, focusing on children. He recalled in 2023 that some of the footage, in which Black teenagers recalled being attacked with racial epithets, “still reverberates in my ears.” He recalled that he and his producer, director and cinematographer Dick Kotuk could still see pipe bombs under the radiator of one of the homes.

“When it aired, it was like a shockwave in the country,” Moyers said. Other reporters were covering the story, he said, but they had not gone in-depth on it.

“When I saw the reality, not an interpretation of reality, what was happening on the streets with these children, I realized our job was to … brings our viewers and our readers as close as possible to the verifiable truth.”

In 1976, Moyers took a job at CBS News, as senior correspondent on CBS Reports, and as a news analyst for CBS Evening News, later noting that “I needed to raise money and I needed to make money.” But that work ended in 1986, as he had already soured on the ability to produce documentaries for primetime.

“After several long and painful months I have concluded that serious public affairs reporting in depth isn’t going to make it in the entertainment milieu of prime time,” he told the New York Times. ”I have to be a grown-up fellow and face the fact that reporting on social issues in depth isn’t going to be given a fair shot.”

Moyers then focused on public broadcasting, having already had a relationship with WNET. That led to a series of critically acclaimed series and projects for public television, where he became a mainstay. That included a number of investigative pieces, including the documentary The Secret Government, about the Iran-Contra scandal. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1995, and was awarded the National Humanities Medal. He also won 30 Emmys and nine Peabody Awards.

Moyers is survived by his wife, Judith Davidson Moyers, who he married in 1954. In addition to his son William, they had another son, John D. Moyers; and a daughter, Suzanne Moyers.

Much of Moyers’ work was inducted into the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a collaboration of the Library of Congress and GBH.

In the 2023 interview with Woodruff, Moyers recalled his interview with Campbell, and interrupting him at one point and telling him, “Oh, you’re talking about the meaning of life.”

“He said, ‘Oh no no no. I am not talking about the meaning of life. I am talking about the experience of being alive. I thing what most people are looking for is the rapture and joy of life, even if it comes in only minutes. It’s what gives life not meaning, but joy.'”

“And I took that literally, too, as well, and so I have just been doing what I should have paid everybody to do.”