Bill Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers in June 5, 1934) is an important
news and documentary journalist, as well as a prominent media critic and a famous
news figure of the 20th century television. He has received over thirty Emmys and countless other awards for excellence. His later shows, "A Walk Through the 20th Century" and "Century" were named outstanding by the prestige Academy of Arts and Sciences. Moyers was also the author of 10+ books, which mostly focused on reports from the hot spots of the evening.
He was born in Oklahoma, in a fabric worker's family, and started his career in 1950, when he was only sixteen years old. Moyers studied journalism at the University of North Texas, and earned numerous other degrees during his remaining career as a journalist. His career started with him being the dean and teacher at numerous universities across the world, however, he gained recognition through affairs of the Johnson administration and is said to be one of the pioneers of modern "negative-ad" campaigns, but the latter is questioned.
After his work as the Deputy Director and special assistant to Lyndon B. Johnson, Moyers took a turn and joined the media in 1967. After some three and a half years of work with the Long Island local paper called Newsday, Moyers was hired by the Public Broadcasting System and hosted the famous Bill Moyers' Journal (1971-1981), he also worked in
CBS during the time the his show ran on PBS, with persons like Dan Rather and However, Moyers's career in
CBS wasn't particularly successful, (albeit it was quite long) as he was criticizing
CBS for the declining standards in his last year at the broadcasting company in 1986.
Moyers is quite popular among... Star Wars fans, as his 1986 documentary, titled The Power of Myth, featured mythologist Joseph Campbell, who in turn had a visible influence on George Lucas. As of now, Moyers is a regular activist among democrats, criticizing the supposed Republican influence on television, as well as the inevitable "dumbing down" of television; hence innovations like the internet are starting to take their toll on television.
Much of his work of the 80s was transcribed to books, for example, he recollected his experiences of the Iranian contra scandal and Watergate in 1988's The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis: With Excerpts from an Essay on Watergate, in the same year, the aforementioned six hour interview with Joseph Campbell was transcribed and printed as The Power of Myth; his literary career had started earlier though, with his 1974 Essay on Watergate. Other notable literary works of Moyers include the following: Healing and the Mind (1993); The Language of Life (1995); and his autobiographical book Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times (2004).
Moyers's contemporary journalism activities mainly include giving reports on the media itself. He, like most independent journalists of today, acknowledges that the larger newscasting corporations are putting more and more pressure on the remaining independent agencies. His humanist approach to journalism is inspiring, as the media focuses more and more on "soft
news" for the people, and Bill's critical approach to journalism will never be forgotten, despite his withdrawal from the modern media.
