Veteran TV journalist, former White House aide was 91

Bill Moyers, a former press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson and longtime broadcast journalist and champion of the free press, has died. He was 91.

Moyers’ son William reported that his father died at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York after a “long illness,” according to the Associated Press.

Born Billy Don Moyers, in Hugo, Oklahoma, on June 5, 1934, Moyers was the son of a dirt farmer-truck driver. He grew up in Marshall, Texas, where he initially wanted to play football but found he was not the right stature. Instead, he turned to writing for his high school newspaper, which would lead him into the world of journalism.

He first formed a relationship with Johnson as a student at the University of Texas at Austin, when he wrote the then-senator seeking work in his 1954 re-election campaign. This landed him a summer job with Johnson, for whom he would go on to hold many jobs over the years, including personal assistant and eventually White House press secretary.

As press secretary, Moyers sought to mend the president’s relationship with the media, but the stresses of the Vietnam War led to his resignation in December 1966.

Afterwards, in 1967, Moyers became publisher of the Long Island-based outlet Newsday. During his stint, Newsday won two Pulitzers, but after three years, he left when the ownership changed, and turned his attention to his best-selling travel book, Listening to America: a Traveler Rediscovers His Country.

In the 1970s, and again later in the 2000s, Moyers led Bill Moyers Journal, a current-events series that aimed to enrich the conversation of and about democracy. He served as chief correspondent of CBS Reports from 1976-78, before moving to PBS for three years. He returned as a senior news analyst at CBS from 1981-1986.

He flipped back to PBS for a bit before forming his own production house, Public Affairs Television, alongside his wife, Judith Davidson Moyers, in 1986. There, they produced programs such as the 11-part series In Search of the Constitution. In 1995, he briefly joined NBC News as a senior analyst and commentator.

In his later years, Moyers worked on PBS’ Frontline; Now, a weekly PBS public affairs program; hour-long weekly interview show, Moyers & Company; and a podcast, Moyers on Democracy.

Throughout his lengthy career, Moyers received many honors, including 35 Emmy Awards, two Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Awards, 11 Peabody Awards, and three George Polk Awards. He was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995.

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Moyers was often outspoken about his views on the importance of a free press, and was oft a critic of the corporately structured American media system. He offered a sage warning in 2019, telling CNN that “for the first time in my long life,” he feared for America.

“I was born in the Depression, lived through World War II, have been a part of politics and government for all these years,” he told the outlet, before observing that “a society, a democracy can die of too many lies. And we’re getting close to that terminal moment unless we reverse the obsession with lies that are being fed around the country.”

But, he added, “Do facts matter anymore? I think they do.”