American journalist (born 1934)
Bill Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers; June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and political commentator. Under the Johnson administration he served from 1965 to 1967 as the eleventh White House Press Secretary. He was a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, from 1967 to 1974. He also worked as a network TV news commentator for ten years. Moyers has been extensively involved with public broadcasting, producing documentaries and news journal programs, and has won many awards and honorary degrees for his investigative journalism and civic activities. He has become well known as a trenchant critic of the corporately structured U.S. news media.
Early years and education.
Born Billy Don Moyers in Hugo in Choctaw County in southeastern Oklahoma, he is the son of John Henry Moyers, a laborer, and Ruby Johnson Moyers. Moyers was reared in Marshall, Texas.
Moyers began his journalism career at 16 as a cub reporter at the "Marshall News Messenger". In college, he studied journalism at the North Texas State College in Denton, Texas. In 1954, US Senator Lyndon B. Johnson employed him as a summer intern and eventually promoted him to manage Johnson's personal mail. 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, wife of Senator Johnson. During the academic year 1956–1957, 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. Moyers served as Director of Information while attending SWBTS. He was also a Baptist pastor in Weir in Williamson County, near Austin.
Moyers was ordained in 1954. 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.
Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
The Peace Corps.
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 to find the funding to actually establish the organization. The Peace Corp Act was signed by President Kennedy on September 22, 1961. 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."
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." 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.” Moyers gave the same answer in the famed "Vanity Fair" Proust questionnaire in 2011.
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.
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Moyers was a key player in the creation of the public broadcasting system.  When, in 1961, FCC Chairman Newton Minnow labeled television "a vast wasteland” and called for programming in the public interest, 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. Bill 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."
Moyers was influential in creating the legislation that would fulfill the committee's recommendations. In 1967, President Johnson 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."
On the 50th anniversary of the Public Broadcasting Act, Moyers and Joseph A. Califano, Jr. spoke about their experience with WNET.
Johnson Administration.
When Lyndon B. Johnson took office after the Kennedy assassination, Moyers became a special assistant to Johnson, serving from 1963 to 1967. Moyers is the last surviving person identifiable in the photograph taken of Johnson's swearing in. 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.
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, ordered Moyers to request FBI name checks on 15 members of Goldwater's staff to find "derogatory" material on their personal lives. Goldwater himself only referred to the Jenkins incident off the record. The Church Committee stated in 1975 that "Moyers has publicly recounted his role in the incident, and his account is confirmed by FBI documents." In 2005, Laurence Silberman wrote that Moyers denied writing the memo in a 1975 phone call, telling him the FBI had fabricated it. Moyers said he had a different recollection of the telephone conversation.
Moyers also sought information from the FBI on the sexual preferences of White House staff members, most notably Jack Valenti. 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."
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.
Moyers approved (but had nothing to do with the production) of the infamous "Daisy Ad" against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign. 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." The ad is considered the starting point of the modern-day harshly negative campaign ad.
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 Marines torching Cam Ne village in the Vietnam War.
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. Moyers stated that his hard-hitting coverage of conservative presidents Reagan and Bush was behind Safer's 1990 allegations.
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." On October 17, 1967, he 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."
The full details of his rift with Johnson were not made public. 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.
Journalism.
"Newsday".
Moyers served as publisher for the Long Island, New York, daily newspaper "Newsday" from 1967 to 1970. The conservative publication had been unsuccessful, but Moyers led the paper in a progressive direction, 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. 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. The two split over the 1968 presidential election, with Guggenheim signing an editorial supporting Richard Nixon, when Moyers supported Hubert Humphrey. 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.
CBS News.
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. During his last year at CBS, Moyers made public statements about declining news standards at the network and declined to renew his contract with CBS, citing commitments with PBS.
NBC News.
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".
PBS.
"Bill Moyers Journal" (1972–1981).
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.
"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.
In 1975, Bill Moyers Journal aired "Rosedale: The Way It Is," documenting the furor after the first Black family moved into Rosedale, Queens — including a rash of fire bombings. Forty-five years later a graduate student drew attention to a short segment recording the reactions of a group of black girls trying to make sense of the virulent racist attack they'd just experienced. "The New York Times" picked up on the story and 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."
Individual programs (1982–2006).
From 1982 through 2006, 70 different documentaries, interviews or limited series produced and hosted by Moyers ran on PBS stations.
Individuals interviewed and profiled included:
Moyers also hosted a 6-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.
Topics of Moyers broadcasts included:
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
"Frontline" (1990–1999).
Between 1990 and 1999, Moyers produced and hosted 7 episodes of the PBS journalism program "Frontline":
"NOW with Bill Moyers" and "Wide Angle" (2002–2005).
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.
"Bill Moyers Journal" (2007–2010).
On April 25, 2007, Moyers returned to PBS with "Bill Moyers Journal". In the first episode, "Buying the War", Moyers investigated what he