Bill Moyers
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William Daniel Moyers (born June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and public commentator.
He was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, and was raised in Texas. Moyers began his journalism career at age 16 as a cub reporter at the Marshall News Messenger in Marshall, Texas. He and his wife, Judith Davidson Moyers, have three grown children and five grandchildren. He is currently president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
Early life
Bill Moyers studied journalism at North Texas University. 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. 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 1957, he received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He was ordained two years later after working as a minister. He briefly accepted a lectureship in Christian ethics at Baylor University. He joined as executive assistant to Lyndon Johnson during his Presidential campaign in 1960. After Johnson lost the race for the Democratic nomination, Moyers directed Johnson's vice presidential campaign in 1960 and acted as liaison with the staff of John Kennedy.http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/holdings/Findingaids/Aides/Moyers/MoyersBio.aspPublic service
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 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. When Walter Jenkins resigned from Johnson's staff in October 1964, Moyers became the President's informal chief of staff until 1966. From July 1965 to February 1967, he also served as White House Press Secretaryhttp://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/holdings/Findingaids/Aides/Moyers/MoyersBio.asp. The details of his rift with Johnson have not been made public, but may be discussed in a forthcoming memoir.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/arts/television/17moye.html?ex=1261026000&en=e634685e55090435&ei=5090Journalism
Best known for his work as a journalist, Moyers has been awarded over thirty Emmys and virtually every other major television journalism prize, including a gold baton from the Dupont Journalism awards and a lifetime Peabody award. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been the recipient of numerous honorary university degrees.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.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/arts/television/17moye.html?ex=1261026000&en=e634685e55090435&ei=5090
In 1971 he began working for the PBS, hosting a news program called Bill Moyers' Journal, which ran until 1981 with a hiatus from 1976-1977.http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/M/htmlM/moyesrbill/moyersbill.htm
In 1976 Moyers moved to the Columbia Broadcasting System (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.http://www.freepress.net/news/15028. During his last year at CBS, Moyers made public statements about declining news standards at the network. Though Thomas H. Wyman was removed as CBS chairman and news president Van Gordon Sauter resigned, Moyers declined to renew his contract with CBS, citing commitments with PBS.
In 1986 Moyers and his wife Judith Davidson formed Public Affairs Television. Among their first productions was the popular PBS series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. 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.http://www.freepress.net/news/15028
Moyers hosted the TV news journal, NOW with Bill Moyers, on PBS for three years. 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 memoir of Lyndon Johnson.http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2004-02-19-bill-moyer_x.htm
The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell, and George Lucas
One of Moyers' signature projects was the popular 1988 television series, The Power of Myth. Consisting of 6 one hour interviews between Moyers and mythologist Joseph Campbell, it was filmed during the last two summers of Campbell's life (Campbell died before the documentary aired on PBS). In addition to discussing Campbell's scholarship in the area of mythology and folklore, Moyers also discussed George Lucas' deliberate use of Campbell's theory of the monomyth in the making of the Star Wars saga. Filmed at Lucas' "Skywalker Ranch", the first episode of the series, The Hero's Adventure, [link] directly discusses this relationship.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 [link].
Political commentary
Regarding the U.S. Media
Claims concerning the Media & Class Warfare
In a 2003 interview with BuzzFlash.com, 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. The rich are getting richer, which arguably wouldn't matter if the rising tide lifted all boats.""But 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. The corporate and governing elites are helping themselves to the spoils of victory -- politics, when all is said and done, comes down to who gets what and who pays for it -- while the public is 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."
Subsequently in the same interview, he added, "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."http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/10/int03281.html.
Charges of U.S. Media Bias
When he retired in December 2004, the AP News Service quoted Moyers, "I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."Politics
Concerning Karl Rove & 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 1800's were a "cherished period of American history." He further states that, "From his own public comments and my reading of the record, it is 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 http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wjs/BillMoyersSpeech.htm."He stipulated that Hanna's primary "passion" was attending to corporate and imperial power; Moyers quoted Hanna, "without compunction, (that) the state of Ohio existed for property. It had no other function...Great wealth was to be gained through monopoly, through using the State for private ends; it was axiomatic therefore that businessmen should run the government and run it for personal profithttp://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wjs/BillMoyersSpeech.htm."
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.'http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wjs/BillMoyersSpeech.htm"
Lastly, he refers to what historian Clinton Rossiter called the period of "the great train robbery of American intellectual history," when "conservatives & pro-corporate apologists" began using terminology like "progress", "opportunity", and "individualism" in order to make "the plunder of America sound like divine right." He added that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was also used by conservative politicians, judges, and publicists to justify the idea of a "natural order of things", as well as "the notion that progress resulted from the elimination of the weak and the 'survival of the fittest.'http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wjs/BillMoyersSpeech.htm"
He concludes that, "This 'degenerate and unlovely age', as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove; the reputed brain of George W. Bush; as the seminal age of inspiration for the politics and governance of America today.http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wjs/BillMoyersSpeech.htm"
Expectations of Possible Right-wing Reactions if Kerry won in 2004
During coverage of the 2004 presidential election, Moyers stated, "I think that if Kerry were to win this in a tight race, I think that there would be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly. I mean that the right-wing is not going to accept it [link]."Criticism
Claims regarding Liberal Bias
Moyers has been the subject of accusations of liberal bias from some quarters. In 2005 former Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson commissioned a study of the show NOW with Bill Moyers. The study supported what Tomlinson characterized as "the image of the left-wing bias of NOW"[link]. Moyers responded to these accusations in a speech given to the National Conference for Media Reform[link]. Tomlinson subsequently resigned on 4 November 2005 after a CPB inquiry into the commissioning of the study.Moyers' frequent criticism of conservative policy has led conservative critics like Brent Bozell to label him a liberal commentator rather than an objective journalist[link].
Moyers has drawn further allegations of bias in his role as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, [link]. In 2003 the center gave money to a variety of establishments which have been described as "left leaning," such as Sojourners magazine ($500,000), Salon.com ($277,785) and The Nation magazine ($115,000)[link]. After reviewing these donations David Horowitz's Discover the Network website has asserted that "Bill Moyers has dropped any pretense of objectivity". He has also been involved with the group [Take Back America], an organization that seeks to help elect liberal political candidates.
Notes
External links
- ["The Secret Government : Constitution in Crisis"]
- [Moyers hosts the 1987 PBS documentary "The Secret Government"]
- [Biography as host of Wide Angle]
- [Museum of Broadcast Communications]
- [America Responds]
- [NOW with David Brancaccio] episode archive includes Moyers' shows
- [Audio of Bill Moyers Speech at 2005 National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis]
- [Quicktime video of Moyers Speech at 2005 National Conference for Media Reform]
- [Talk at Paramount Theater in Seattle on April 2005 as part of Foolproof's American Voices series & KUOW Speakers Forum]
- [Peace Corps biography of Bill Moyers]
- [Moyers' retirement from NOW announced]
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