Opinion: Remembering Bill Moyers

All of us in public broadcasting owe a thanks to Bill Moyers, who died this week at the age of 91. He was one of the signature figures, along with Big Bird and Susan Stamberg, who helped build public broadcasting in the United States.

Moyers started his career as a teenage cub reporter at a newspaper in Marshall, Texas. He went on to work as an intern for then-senator Lyndon Johnson. He became ordained as Baptist minister, and a few years later, in 1960, he joined Johnson on the campaign trail, eventually following him to the White House after the Kennedy assassination.

“I work for him despite his faults,” he said once when he was Johnson’s press secretary, “and he lets me work for him despite my deficiencies.” They had a falling out, reportedly over the war in Vietnam, and Moyers returned to journalism for the next 6 decades.

He won the most prestigious awards of our profession, some in bunches: more than 30 Emmys, 11 Peabodys, two Columbia-Duponts, and many other honors for his PBS documentaries and interviews.

He interviewed newsmakers. But from the start of Bill Moyers Journal, to NOW with Bill Moyers, and to Wide Angle, he interviewed poets like Rita Dove, scholars like Joseph Campbell, and other writers, artists, religious leaders and historical figures like Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

He once asked Tutu how people who read the same Bible and prayed to the same God could wind up on opposite sides of grievously serious issues.

“We are human beings,” Tutu said to him, “who have been given, extraordinarily, by this God we worship the gift of freedom … God takes seriously the gift that God has given us. And we make choices. And the God, who is an omnipotent God, in many ways become impotent, because God has given us the gift to choose.”

In a media world which can overwhelm with breaking news, Bill Moyers asked questions that could be at once simple and probing in his Texas hill country tenor, steeped with a pastor’s compassion, and reminded us to try to find out what can last in the human heart.

I remember what seemed almost an incidental remark he made years ago at a long news meeting which we both attended.

“Is this a story that reaches into people?,” Bill Moyers asked.

We can honor his memory by asking ourselves that question as we go on with our work today.

 

What does Montreal sound like?

World Cafe is kicking off its latest Sense of Place series with a playlist that offers a glimpse of Montreal's lively music scene.

Dozens of Bob Ross paintings will be auctioned to help public TV after funding cuts

Thirty of Ross' trademark landscapes will be sold at a series of auctions starting in November. He painted many of them live on The Joy of Painting, which started airing on PBS in the 1980s.

Why gold is having its best year since 1979

The price of gold hit $4,000 per ounce for the first time ever. It's a bad sign for the U.S. economy

1 in 5 high schoolers has had a romantic AI relationship, or knows someone who has

A national survey of students, teachers and parents shines a light on how the AI revolution is playing out in schools – including when it comes to bullying and a community's trust in schools.

RFK Jr.’s new dietary guidelines could be controversial. Here’s what to watch for

The Health Secretary's affinity for saturated fat and his ire over ultra-processed foods could influence federal food guidelines, expected out this fall.

A MacArthur ‘genius’ gleans surprising lessons from ancient bones, shards and trash

Kristina Douglass wanted to find out the truth about how past communities adapted to environmental change. Her revelatory work has earned her a MacArthur award.

More Front Page Coverage