Bill Moyers

After 43 years Bill Moyers,  perhaps television's most visible intellectual officially retired from TV in January of 2015. His voice was one of only a few against the corrupting influence of money in politics, for the environment and civil rights, against growing economic inequality. An old friend, broadcaster and columnist Jim Hightower, says Congress should declare him "one of America's most precious natural resources." Bill Moyers has been a voice of truth and courage in the face of years of media pressure. In his TV show - Moyers & Company  he discusses issues of interest to us all. The U.S. Supreme Court has created a system of campaign finance where dirty money is king. And Moyers believes that this may well be the end of democracy as we have known it. As a "news analyst" who had worked alongside CBS's Dan Rather, Moyers was already politically suspect to the right when he produced and hosted a 1987 documentary for PBS about the Iran-contra affair, The Secret Government. The program so outraged conservatives that it sparked a new effort to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the intermediary that funnels federal funds to public broadcasters. The efforts against Moyers were renewed in 2005, when the CPB's conservative chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, sought to demonstrate liberal bias at PBS. He secretly commissioned a consultant to monitor the political views of guests on Now with Bill Moyers. He ultimately deemed the program "unbalanced" in its discussion of public affairs. Moyers didn't back down, firing back that Tomlinson was waging "a surreptitious and relentless campaign" against him, his program and public broadcasting. "I always knew Nixon would be back," he said at the time. "I just didn't know that this time he would ask to be chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting." Though he will no longer have a television platform, Moyers will continue in the media as an investor. As the president of the New Jersey-based Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, Moyers has helped direct millions of dollars in charitable grants to left-leaning journals and public broadcasting outlets over the years. Bill Moyers and his weekly television show, "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS, has gone,  only to be replaced by The NewsHour, "public TV's nightly newscast," is actually privately owned. For-profit conglomerate Liberty Media has held a controlling stake in the NewsHour since 1994. An article, titled Taking Public Out Of Public Tv   reveals that The News Hour viewers were five times as likely to see guests representing corporations (10 percent v. 2 percent) than representatives of public interest groups who might counterweigh such moneyed interests--labor, consumer and environmental organizations. From The Huffington Post: A broadcast journalist for more than four decades, Bill Moyers has been recognized as one of the unique voices of our times, one that resonates with multiple generations. Mr.Moyers provides fresh, alternative insights into the personalities and issues shaping our country and the deeper, more institutional challenges facing us now and in the future. In 2012, at the of 77, Moyers began his latest media venture with the launch of Moyers & Company on air and online at BillMoyers.com – providing “conversations on democracy” and explorations of contemporary culture, making sense of what matters to us all. With his wife and creative partner, Judith Davidson Moyers, Bill Moyers has produced such groundbreaking public affairs series as NOW with Bill Moyers (from 2002 through 2005) and Bill Moyers Journal (from 2007 through 2010). Since the company’s founding in 1986, other notable productions have included the landmark 1988 series, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, as well as Healing and the Mind, The Language of Life, Genesis, On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying, Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home, America’s First River, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, Faith & Reason, and Moyers on America. Moyers began his journalism career at age 16 as a cub reporter for his hometown daily newspaper in Marshall, Texas. He was a founding organizer and deputy director of the Peace Corps and special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Moyers served as Johnson’s press secretary from 1965 to 1967. As publisher of Newsday from 1967 to 1970, Moyers brought aboard writers including Pete Hamill, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Saul Bellow, and led the paper to two Pulitzer Prizes. In 1976, he was the senior correspondent for the distinguished documentary series CBS Reports and later a senior news analyst for The CBS Evening News. For his work, Bill Moyers has received more than 30 Emmys, two prestigious Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Awards, nine Peabodys, and three George Polk Awards. In the first year it was bestowed, Moyers received the prestigious Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts by the American Film Institute. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he also received the Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association and has been honored by the Television Critics Association for outstanding career achievement. Moyers was elected to the Television Hall of Fame in 1995. A year later he received the Charles Frankel Prize (now the National Humanities Medal) from the National Endowment for the Humanities “for outstanding contributions to American cultural life.” In 2005, Moyers received the PEN USA Courageous Advocacy Award for his passionate, outspoken commitment to freedom of speech and his dedication to journalistic integrity. He has also been honored with the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Lifetime Achievement Award. The Museum of Broadcast Communications calls Moyers, “One of the few broadcast journalists who might be said to approach the stature of Edward R. Murrow. If Murrow founded broadcast journalism, Moyers significantly extended its traditions.” Moyers’ books include such bestsellers as Listening to America, The Power of Myth, Healing and the Mind, The Language of Life, Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times, and Moyers on Democracy. His most recent book, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues, was published in May 2011. He currently serves as president of the Schumann Media Center, a non-profit organization that supports independent journalism. Married for more than 55 years, Judith and Bill Moyers have three grown children and five grandchildren.    Show full bio Watch: The End Game for Democracy  -Previously published on BillMoyers.com We are so close to losing our democracy to the mercenary class, it's as if we are leaning way over the rim of the Grand Canyon and all that's needed is a swift kick in the pants. Look out below.  The predators in Washington...     Read Post Mr. President, Have Pity on the Working Man And you thought the government didn't have a jobs program. It does. The problem is that the pay and benefits are lousy, and in many cases the working conditions ain't so great either.  We're not talking about the civil service. No, as one of two recent reports notes, "Hundreds of...     Read Post WATCH: What Makes Florida the 'Gunshine' State When gun industry analyst Tom Diaz joined me on TV to talk about gun laws that make Americans more vulnerable, our substantial conversation lasted so long, we needed to extend it online. In this web-only continuation, Diaz explores Florida's role as a testing ground for laws that...     Read Post WATCH: 'Ag Gag' Laws Silence Factory Farm Whistleblowers  - Originally posted at BillMoyers.com When it comes to keeping our food supply safe and our humane values intact, sometimes there's nothing like a whistleblower -- someone who will show or tell us the truth that someone else wants to keep hidden. In 2011, McDonald's fired a producer of...     Read Post WATCH: Nuns Hit the Road for Immigration Reform   - Originally posted at BillMoyers.com The Nuns on the Bus have hit the road again. Last year, we hitched a ride with a group of Catholic sisters as they traveled the country by tour bus, dropping in on towns to spotlight growing poverty in America and to protest... Read Post WATCH: How Computer Coders Can Protect Our Privacy Originally posted at BillMoyers.com Lawrence Lessig, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and founder of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, explains how our government -- given all the ways it can spy on us -- should just as determinedly... Read Post Enabling Greed Makes U.S. Sick     Previously posted at BillMoyers.com At the end of a week that reminds us to be ever vigilant about the dangers of government overreaching its authority, whether by the long arm of the IRS or the Justice Department, we should pause to think about another threat -- from too...    Read Post Don't Shoot -- Organize! We were struck this week by one response to our broadcast last week on gun violence and the Newtown school killings. A visitor to the website wrote, "It is interesting to me that Bill Moyers, who every week describes the massive levels of corruption in our government... [and] the advocates...     Read Post WATCH: The Myth of the 'Free Market'  -   Originally posted at BillMoyers.com In my conversation with Marshall Ganz, the veteran activist and organizer challenges the notion of the 'free market' as an effective way to address our economic, political, and moral issues. Instead, he proposes more collaborative solutions.  "We need a new story, a new way...     Read Post Sandy Hook Promise: There Will Be Change This week, we spent time with Francine and David Wheeler, parents of six-year-old Ben Wheeler, one of the 20 children and six educators shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Francine and David moved from New York City to Newtown to raise a family...     Read Post Do-Nothing Congress Gives Inertia a Bad Name   - Originally posted at BillMoyers.com If you want to see why the public approval rating of Congress is down in the sub-arctic range -- an icy 15 percent by last count -- all you have to do is take a quick look at how the House and Senate...    Read Post A Eulogy for Bob Edgar There are people in public life who cannot be bought, flattered, or hammered into submission. Bob Edgar was one of them. The president of Common Cause died this week at age 69, after working out on his treadmill. That's the way he lived: on the go, overbooked, overworked -- and...    Read Post WATCH: The United States of Inequality   -  Originally published at BillMoyers.com Inequality matters. You will hear people say it doesn't, but they are usually so high up the ladder they can't even see those at the bottom. The distance between the first and the least in America is vast and growing. The Washington Post recently...   Read Post WATCH: Sandra Steingraber on Going Behind Bars to Protest Fracking   -  Originally posted at BillMoyers.com In the clip below, biologist and activist Sandra Steingraber explains why she and others illegally blocked the driveway of natural gas company Inergy in upstate New York , a crime for which she went to jail on Wednesday, April 17 -- a day...    Read Post Dr. King's 'Two Americas' Truer Now than Ever  - Originally posted at BillMoyers.com You may think you know about Martin Luther King, Jr., but there is much about the man and his message we have conveniently forgotten. He was a prophet, like Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah of old, calling kings and plutocrats to account -- speaking truth... Read Post "I Know a Lot More About Being White Than You Know About Being Indian   - Originally posted at BillMoyers.com Writer Sherman Alexie, who was born on a Native American reservation, talks with me about feeling "lost and insignificant inside the larger culture," and how his culture's "lack of power" is very apparent in stereotypical sports mascots, like that of the Cleveland...  Read Post WATCH: Homeless in High Tech's Shadow  - Originally posted at BillMoyers.com California's Silicon Valley is a microcosm of America's new extremes of wealth and poverty. Business is better than it's been in ten years. Facebook, Google, and Apple have minted hundreds of new tech millionaires.  But not far away, the homeless are...    Read Post WATCH: The Hypocrisy of 'Justice for All'   - Originally posted at BillMoyers.com The next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance -- "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" -- remember: it's...   Read Post WATCH: 'Bronx Defenders' Redefine Public Defense You've heard it on a thousand television shows: the police arrest suspects and read them their rights. One of them is, "If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you." That's because, 50 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Gideon vs. Wainwright that...    Read Post WATCH: The Death Penalty's Fatal Flaws Right now, there are more than 3,100 inmates on death row -- more than 60 percent of them members of racial or ethnic minorities. Over time, Supreme Court Justices have fine-tuned the circumstances under which the death penalty may still apply, but no set of laws or jurisprudence can undo... Read Post . More about Bill Moyers Moyers audio only