Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary turned acclaimed TV journalist, dead at 91
NEW YORK: Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television's most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died Thursday at age 91.
Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former CEO of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.
Moyers' son William said his father died at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York after a 'long illness.'
Moyers' career ranged from youthful Baptist minister to deputy director of the Peace Corps, from Johnson's press secretary to newspaper publisher, senior news analyst for 'The CBS Evening News' and chief correspondent for 'CBS Reports.'
But it was for public television that Moyers produced some of TV's most cerebral and provocative series. In hundreds of hours of PBS programs, he proved at home with subjects ranging from government corruption to modern dance, from drug addiction to media consolidation, from religion to environmental abuse.
In 1988, Moyers produced 'The Secret Government' about the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration and simultaneously published a book under the same name. Around that time, he galvanized viewers with 'Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth,' a series of six one-hour interviews with the prominent religious scholar. The accompanying book became a best-seller.
His televised chats with poet Robert Bly almost single-handedly launched the 1990s Men's Movement, and his 1993 series 'Healing and the Mind' had a profound impact on the medical community and on medical education.
In a medium that supposedly abhors 'talking heads' — shots of subject and interviewer talking — Moyers came to specialize in just that. He once explained why: 'The question is, are the talking heads thinking minds and thinking people? Are they interesting to watch? I think the most fascinating production value is the human face.'
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