Bill Moyers, eminence of public affairs broadcasting, dies at 91
Source: Washington Post
41 minutes ago
Bill Moyers, who served as chief White House spokesman for President Lyndon B. Johnson and then, for more than 40 years, as a broadcast journalist known for bringing ideas — both timely and timeless — to television, died June 26 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 91. The cause was complications from prostate cancer, said his son, William Cope Moyers.
Long before he became a grandee of public television, the Texas-raised Mr. Moyers was a top aide and, by many accounts, a surrogate son to Johnson. The powerful Texas Democrat had given Mr. Moyers a summer job in his U.S. Senate office in 1954 when Mr. Moyers was in college.
Mr. Moyers arrived on Capitol Hill and, without even unpacking his bags, worked through the night addressing 275,000 envelopes using a foot-operated “addressograph” machine. By the end of the summer, he was handling Johnson’s personal correspondence.
Over the next 12 years, when he wasn’t studying or preaching — Mr. Moyers became an ordained Baptist minister in 1954 — he found his way to the highest levels of government. When Johnson was tapped in 1960 as the running mate of Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), Mr. Moyers became the liaison between the Johnson and Kennedy camps. “I could interpret Boston to Austin,” he later told journalist Don Shelby.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/06/26/bill-moyers-lbj-pbs-broadcasting-dead/
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Just breaking.
Article updated.
Original article -
Bill Moyers, who served as press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson and then, for more than 40 years, as a broadcast journalist known for bringing ideas -- both timely and timeless -- to television, died June 26 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 91.
The cause was complications from prostate cancer, said his son, William Cope Moyers. Long before he became a grandee of public television, the Texas-born Mr. Moyers was a top aide and, by many accounts, a surrogate son to Johnson. The powerful Texas Democrat had given Mr. Moyers a summer job in his U.S. Senate office in 1954 when Mr. Moyers was in college.
Mr. Moyers arrived on Capitol Hill and, without even unpacking his bags, worked through the night addressing 275,000 envelopes using a foot-operated "addressograph" machine. By the end of the summer, he was handling Johnson's personal correspondence.
Over the next 12 years, when he wasn't studying or preaching -- Mr. Moyers became an ordained Baptist minister in 1954 -- he found his way to the highest levels of government. When Johnson was tapped in 1960 as Sen. John F. Kennedy's (D-Massachusetts) running mate, Mr. Moyers became the liaison between the Johnson and Kennedy camps. "I could interpret Boston to Austin," he later told journalist Don Shelby.
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Great affect and import that I can't find appropriate words to describe him.
I've already missed him for a while.
but he lived a long, eventful, successful life. I hope he has a wonderful afterlife!
one of my heroes.
For a short time, he was also a Deputy Director of the Peace Corps, along with another of my heroes, Warren Wiggins!
Why is it that we lose so many of the GOOD ones - and are left with the scum like You-Know-Who?
. . .along with his co-host David Brancaccio.
Rest In Power and In Peace, good sir.
From 2006. It is a SUPERB statement of the contemporary political environment!
https://www.freedomclubusa.org/a_time_for_heresy
There are no victimless crimes in politics. The cost of corruption is passed on to the people. When the government of the United States falls under the thumb of the powerful and privileged, regular folks get squashed. We are dealing here with a vision sharply at odds with the majority of Americans. These are people who want to arrange the world for the convenience of themselves and the multinational corporations that pay for their elections....
This is the heresy of our time -- to wrestle with the gods who guard the boundaries of this great nation's promise, and to confront the medicine men in the woods, twirling their bullroarers to keep us in fear and trembling. For the greatest heretic of all is Jesus of Nazareth, who drove the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem as we must now drive the money changers from the temples of democracy.
RIP, Bill Moyers
It was relayed to the public BY Bill Moyers -
Bill D. Moyers
WHAT A REAL PRESIDENT WAS LIKE
November 12, 1988
WHILE Lyndon Baines Johnson was a man of time and place, he felt the bitter paradox of both. I was a young man on his staff in 1960 when he gave me a vivid account of that southern schizophrenia he understood and feared. We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Some years later when Johnson was president, there was a press conference in the East Room. A reporter unexpectedly asked the president how he could explain his sudden passion for civil rights when he had never shown much enthusiasm for the cause. The question hung in the air. I could almost hear his silent cursing of a press secretary who had not anticipated this one.
But then he relaxed, and from an instinct no assistant could brief -- one seasoned in the double life from which he was delivered and hoped to deliver others -- he said in effect: Most of us don't have a second chance to correct the mistakes of our youth. I do and I am. That evening, sitting in the White House, discussing the question with friends and staff, he gestured broadly and said,
"Eisenhower used to tell me that this place was a prison. I never felt freer." For weeks in 1964, the president carried in his pocket the summary of a Census Bureau report showing that the lifetime earnings of an average black college graduate were lower than that of a white man with an eighth-grade education. And when The New York Times in November 1964 reported racial segregation to be increasing instead of disappearing, he took his felt-tip pen and scribbled across it "shame, shame, shame," and sent it to Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader in the Senate. I have a hard time explaining to our two sons and daughter -- now in their twenties -- that when they were little, America was still deeply segregated.
(snip)
Brave warrior
He will be missed. Great man.
