Everything about Bill Moyers totally explained
Bill Moyers (born
June 5,
1934, as
William Donald "Billy Don" Moyers) is an
American journalist and public commentator. He served as
White House Press Secretary from 1965-7. He is President, since 1990, of
The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, also know as
The Schumann Foundation or
Florence and John Schumann Foundation. He lives in
New York City.
Career
Early years and education
Born in
Hugo, Oklahoma, and raised in
Texas, Bill Moyers was born to father John Henry Moyers, a laborer, and mother Ruby (née Johnson).
Moyers began his
journalism career at the age of sixteen as a cub
reporter at the
Marshall News Messenger in
Marshall, Texas. Bill Moyers studied
journalism at the
University of North Texas. In 1954, he worked as a summer
intern for Senator
Lyndon Baines Johnson, eventually being in charge of Johnson's personal mail before his internship was finished. Moyers soon transferred to the
University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote for
The Daily Texan newspaper and graduated in 1956 with a
Bachelor of Arts in journalism. While in Austin, Moyers worked as an assistant to the news editor for
KTBC Radio and Television, a station owned by
Lady Bird Johnson. During the academic year 1956-1957 he studied at the
University of Edinburgh as a
Rotary International Fellow. In 1959,
Kennedy and Johnson administrations
During the
Kennedy Administration, Moyers was first appointed as associate director of public affairs for the newly created
Peace Corps in 1961. He served as Deputy Director from 1962-63. When
Lyndon Johnson took office after the
Kennedy assassination, Moyers became a special assistant to Johnson, serving from 1963–1967. 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 1966. From July 1965 to February 1967, he also served as
White House Press Secretary. 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, conservative federal judge
Laurence Silberman claimed that Moyers denied writing the memo in a 1975 phone call, an unverified claim that Moyers disputes.
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." The details of his rift with Johnson have not been made public, but may be discussed in a forthcoming memoir.
Journalism
Newsday
His journalistic career began in earnest when he served as
publisher for the
Long Island, New York daily newspaper
Newsday from 1967 to 1970. Moyers left when the paper was fully acquired by the
Times-Mirror Company, publisher of the
Los Angeles Times.
CBS News
In 1976 he moved to
CBS, where he worked as editor and chief correspondent for
CBS Reports until 1980, then as senior news analyst and commentator for the
CBS Evening News with Dan Rather from 1981-1986. 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.
The Power of Myth series
In 1986 Moyers and his wife Judith Davidson Moyers formed
Public Affairs Television. Among their first productions was the popular
PBS 1988 documentary series
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, consisting of six one-hour interviews between Moyers and mythologist
Joseph Campbell. The documentary covers Campbell's exploration of the
monomyth and the
hero cycle, or the story of the hero, as they manifest in various cultures. Campbell's influence is clearly seen in the work of
George Lucas' Star Wars saga. In the first interview, filmed at George Lucas' "
Skywalker Ranch," Moyers and Campbell discuss the relationship between Campbell's theories and Lucas' creative work. Twelve years after the making of
The Power of Myth, Moyers and Lucas met again for the 1999 interview, the
Mythology of Star Wars with George Lucas & Bill Moyers, to further discuss the impact of Campbell's work on Lucas' films.
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.
Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason
In 2006 he presented two public television series.
Faith and Reason
, a series of conversations with esteemed writers of various faiths and of no faith, explored the question, "In a world in which religion is poison to some and salvation to others, how do we live together?"
Bill Moyers on America
The other recent series,
Moyers on America, analyzed in depth the ramifications of three important issues: the
Jack Abramoff scandal (
"Capitol Crimes"), evangelical religion and
environmentalism (
"Is God Green?"), and threats to open public access of the Internet (
"The Net at Risk").
Bill Moyers Journal
On
April 25,
2007, Moyers returned to PBS with
Bill Moyers Journal. The first episode, entitled
"Buying the War", had Moyers investigating the general media's shortcomings in the run-up to the
War in Iraq.
Awards
Recipient of the
2006 Lifetime Emmy, "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," according to the official announcement, which also noted, "the scope of and quality of his broadcasts have been honored time and again. It is fitting that the
National Television Academy honor him with our highest honor – the Lifetime Achievement Award." He has received well over thirty Emmys and virtually every other major television journalism prize, including a gold baton from the
DuPont-Columbia Journalism awards, a lifetime
Peabody award, 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 and has been the recipient of numerous
honorary degrees, including a
doctorate from the
American Film Institute.
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 that "The rich are getting richer, which arguably wouldn't matter if the rising tide lifted all boats." Instead, however, "The 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."
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."
On Karl Rove and U.S. politics
During his speech at the "Take Back America" Conference, Moyers defined what he considered to be
Karl Rove's influence on George W. Bush's administration. Moyers asserted that, from his reading of Rove, the mid to late 1800s were to Rove a "cherished period of American history." He further states, "From his own public comments and my reading of the record, it's apparent that Karl Rove has modeled the Bush presidency on that of
William McKinley...and modeled himself on
Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley."
He stipulated that Hanna's primary "passion" was attending to corporate and imperial power.
Furthermore, Moyers indicates that Hanna gathered support for McKinley's presidential campaign from "the corporate interests of the day" and was responsible for Ohio and Washington coming under the rule of "bankers, railroads and public utility corporations." He submitted that political opponents of this transfer of power were "smeared as disturbers of the peace, socialists, anarchists, or worse."
Presidential draft initiative
In late 2005 an attempt was begun to draft Moyers for a 2008 run at the Democratic presidential nomination. The founder of this initiative, Scott Beckman, circulated an article on the Internet entitled
You Are Not Alone, laying out his reasoning and establishing a website. Although the effort was popular on the Internet, it wasn't supported by Moyers, who, according to his attorneys, would "not under any circumstances" run for president. The petition drive to gain 100,000 signatures by the end of the year garnered less than one percent of the total the few months it was in operation. The website was taken down at Moyers' request, but on
July 24,
2006,
political commentator Molly Ivins published an article entitled
Run Bill Moyers for President, Seriously on the progressive website
Truthdig. A follow-up was published two days later by
John Nichols on his
blog on
The Nation magazine's website. However, this effort too failed to garner the extensive grassroots support envisioned. Then in October of 2006 an article was published on Common Dreams NewsCenter by
Ralph Nader in which he supported the Moyers candidacy. "With his deep sense of history relating to the great economic struggles in American history between workers and large companies and industries," Nader added, "Moyers today is a leading spokesman on the need to deconcentrate the manifold concentrations of political and economic power by global corporations. He is especially keen on doing something about media concentration about which he knows from recurrent personal experience as a television commentator, investigator, anchor and newspaper editor." Nader's effort was seconded by Nichols. There are also two new websites promoting the effort: Draft Bill Moyers For President Blog and Draft Bill Moyers For President Activist Center.
Allegations of bias
In 2005 former
CPB chairman
Kenneth Tomlinson commissioned a study of the show
NOW with Bill Moyers. Tomlinson claimed that the study supported what he characterized as "the image of the left-wing bias of NOW". Moyers replied to this by saying that his journalism showed "the actual experience of regular people is the missing link in a nation wired for everything but the truth." Moyers characterized Tomlinson as "an ally of Karl Rove and the right-wing monopoly's point man to keep tabs on public broadcasting." Tomlinson, he said, "found kindred spirits at the right-wing editorial board of the Wall Street Journal where the 'animal spirits of business' are routinely celebrated." Tomlinson subsequently resigned on 4 November 2005 after a CPB inquiry found improprieties in the commissioning of the study. Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting said on 15 November 2005 "that they'd uncovered evidence that (Tomlinson) had repeatedly broken federal law and the organization's own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal bias."
(External Link)
Referring to a
2007-07-13 edition of
Bill Moyers Journal, discussing the possible
impeachment of President
George W. Bush, and featuring guests from opposing ends of the political spectrum, both in favor of impeachment,
PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler praised Moyers for his initiative in highlighting different topics, but felt he could have used a more balanced approach. Moyers disagreed, saying:
"The journalist's job isn't to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium between two opposing opinions out of some misshapen respect — sometimes, alas, reverence — for the prevailing consensus among the powers-that-be. The journalist's job is to seek out and offer the public the best thinking on an issue, event, or story."
Getler responded by saying that
"On the broad issue of balance, I don't disagree with Moyers ... It can create a false sense of equivalence among readers or viewers in cases where that isn't justified.... [butthat] while conventional, equal-time balance is frequently a false measure, the absence of any balance can undermine any program."
Personal life
Moyers married the late Judith Suzanne Davidson (a producer), December 18, 1954. They had three children and five grandchildren. His son, William Cope Moyers (
CNN producer,
Hazelden Foundation spokesman), struggled to overcome alcoholism as detailed in the book
Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption. He includes letters from Bill Moyers in his book which he says 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." His other son, John Moyers, assisted in the foundation of TomPaine.com, "an online public affairs journal of progressive analysis and commentary."
Further Information
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