Bill Moyers, a key member of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s inner circle and later a guiding force in American journalism during more than 40 years in public television, has died at the age of 91, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.
At a time when critics said broadcast news was becoming fluffier and shallower, Moyers pursued a thoughtful, in-depth approach, bringing an intellectual perspective delivered in a soothing Texas twang.
He took an activist approach to the job and The Nation magazine called him a “radical presence” in broadcast news, which his critics said was proof that the Public Broadcasting Service network should not get federal funding.
Starting in 1971, Moyers had regular shows on public television, including “Bill Moyers’ Journal,” “Now With Bill Moyers,” “Moyers on America” and “Moyers and Company,” as well limited-run series on the U.S. Constitution, faith and mythology.
Among the other topics he explored at length on his shows were poverty, racism, money in politics, climate change, income inequality, the shortcomings of the media and what he called the “pirates and predators of Wall Street.”
“He used the tools of the documentarian to wield a velvet sledgehammer, bludgeoning corporate polluters and government ne’er-do-wells with precision and grace,” New York Times media columnist David Carr wrote in 2004.
Moyers left Johnson’s service in 1967 — partly because he no longer believed in his boss’s war in Vietnam — to become publisher of Newsday, a Long Island, New York daily. The newspaper won two Pulitzer Prizes under his leadership, but he left in 1970 after the publisher deemed him too liberal.
Moyers then went on a bus ride around the country that he chronicled in the book “Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country.”
He made his move to PBS in 1971 with “Bill Moyers Journal” and in 1986 he and his wife, Judith, started their own production company to make shows for public television stations.