Remembering renowned Broadcaster Bill Moyers | Fresh Air

What this episode is about

Bill Moyers, a pivotal figure in American journalism and politics, passed away at 91, leaving behind a legacy of significant contributions to presidential campaigns, public television, and landmark legislation during the Johnson administration. Renowned for his impactful interviews and the creation of the iconic "Daisy" political ad, Moyers’ career spanned from his early reporting in Texas to influential roles in the White House and the promotion of public broadcasting.

Key takeaways

• From daisy chains to daisy ads, Moyers understood the power of visuals in politics better than most.
• The 'Daisy ad' may have won elections, but Moyers' true legacy is television as America's greatest classroom.
• In an age of misinformation, Moyers warned us: democracy is courting danger with a mercenary class at the helm.
• Moyers’ mentorship of future leaders shows that great journalists are also great teachers, amplifying voices that matter.
• Follow your bliss, Moyers advised—prove that even in chaos, passion can open unexpected doors. Who's ready to walk through?

Who speaks in this episode?

• David B. Culie (Host) · 13 min speaking
• Bill Moyers (Guest) · 26 min speaking
• Terry Gross (Host) · 4 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Bill Moyers, Fresh Air, Daisy ad, New York News Day
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Bill Moyers, Fresh Air
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Fresh Air
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Bill Moyers, Texas State College
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Fresh Air
6. 30:00 – 35:00: Bill Moyers
7. 40:00 – 43:52: Bill Moyers

Notable quotes from "Remembering renowned Broadcaster Bill Moyers | Fresh Air"

• This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David B. Culie. Bill Moyers, who made significant contributions to presidential politics and policies, newspapers, and network TV news, and was.

  about Fresh Air · at 0:00

• So-called Daisy ad, with a little girl plucking a daisy while counting down to a nuclear explosion. From 1965 to 1967, Moyers was LBJ's White House press secretary. He also was…

  about Bill Moyers · at 1:42

• A scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming.

  about George Herbert Walker Bush · at 6:52

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Bill Moyers — Person · Referenced subject (tribute focus) / archival interviewee · 13 mentions · first at 0:02
  Central figure of the episode: a career-spanning appreciation of his work in politics and public broadcasting, using archival interviews with Terry Gross.
• Lynen Baines Johnson — Person · Referenced political figure (Moyers’ principal government collaborator) · 2 mentions
  Presented as the president whose agenda Moyers helped advance (Great Society, Medicare/Medicaid, civil rights) and whose Vietnam policies later caused a rupture with Moyers.
  Assassinated, was on Air Force One to witness LBJ be sworn in as the new president. Moyers worked on Johnson's pivotal political achievements, including the Civil Rights Act…
• George Herbert Walker Bush — Person · Referenced political figure (subject of Moyers critique) · 2 mentions
  Used as an example of Moyers’ political warnings/criticism—particularly about unified federal power behind a right-wing agenda after the 2002 midterms.

Companies & orgs

• Texas State College — Company · 2 mentions · first at 0:39
  By age 16, he was a cub reporter for the Marshall News Messenger. In 1954, while attending Texas State College and majoring in journalism, he got a summer job interning for his…
• New York News Day — Company · 1 mention · first at 2:05
  After falling out with Johnson over his Vietnam policies, Moyers retired from politics and became publisher of New York News Day, where he hired Pete Hamill and won two Pulitzer prizes.

Concepts & topics

• Daisy ad — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:42
  Society programs as Medicare and Medicaid. When Johnson was running for reelection in 1964, it was Moyers who helped LBJ beat Republican candidate Barry Goldwater by creating…

Media & podcasts

• Fresh Air — Media · 5 mentions · first at 0:00

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David B. Culie. Bill Moyers, who made significant contributions to presidential politics and policies, newspapers, and network TV news, and was an early proponent of public television, where he did much of his best work, died Thursday. He was 91 years old. On today's show, we'll listen back to excerpts of the many interviews he did with Terry Gross. But we'll begin with this appreciation. Bill Moyers was born in 1934 in Hugo, Oklahoma and raised in Marshall, Texas. By age 16, he was a cub reporter for the Marshall News Messenger. In 1954, while attending Texas State College and majoring in journalism, he got a summer job interning for his state senator, Lynden Baines Johnson. He got the job by writing LBJ a letter that said, quote, "I can tell you something about young people in Texas if you can tell me something about politics." Unquote.

0:59 Moyers became an ordained minister in 1959 and crossed paths with LBJ again when Johnson was running as vice president on the Democratic ticket with John F. Kennedy. Moyers stuck around to help design Kennedy's Peace Corps program and after Kennedy was assassinated, was on Air Force One to witness LBJ be sworn in as the new president. Moyers worked on Johnson's pivotal political achievements, including the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and such great society programs as Medicare and Medicaid. When Johnson was running for reelection in 1964, it was Moyers who helped LBJ beat Republican candidate Barry Goldwater by creating the most famous political ad in TV history, the so-called Daisy ad, with a little girl plucking a daisy while counting down to a nuclear explosion. From 1965 to 1967, Moyers was LBJ's White House press secretary. He also was a member of the commission that led to the creation of

1:58 public television. After falling out with Johnson over his Vietnam policies, Moyers retired from politics and became publisher of New York News Day, where he hired Pete Hamill and won two Pulitzer prizes. Despite all those achievements, it was in television that Bill Moyers made his biggest mark. He began working in public television almost in its infancy. In 1976, reporting for a local station, he won his first Peabody Award for an extended interview with a then littleknown Georgia politician named Jimmy Carter. That program would evolve into the PBS series Bill Moyer's Journal, which also would win a Peabody, as would seven other Moyers programs over the decades. His distinguished career, mostly at PBS, but also at CBS, continued until his retirement from TV in 2015 at age 80. Moyers was awarded a lifetime achievement Emmy in 2006, adding to his personal Emmy total of an amazing and well-earned 35 Emmy awards.

3:02 "My ambition always was to be a teacher," Bill Moyers told me once in an interview. He went on to say, "And I think that is what essentially television has enabled me to do. It is the largest classroom in America." The apex of Bill Moyers as a TV teacher came in 1988 with the six-part PBS series Joseph Campbell and the power of myth with Bill Moyers. Campbell, as author and professor, had devoted his life to the study of comparative mythologies and religions, and his life was almost over. Campbell would die before his recorded conversations with Moyers were televised, but his message was delivered postumously to 30 million PBS viewers. With Moyers as guide, theirs was a genuine conversation, allowing Campbell at one point to deliver his famous three-word inspirational message, follow your bliss. Do you ever have this sense when you're following your bliss as I have at moments of being helped by hidden hands

4:02 all the time? It it's it's miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time. Namely, that if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you. And uh and the life that you ought to be living is the one you're living somehow. And uh when you can see it, you you begin to deal with people who are in the field of your bliss and they open doors to you. I say follow your bliss and don't be afraid and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

4:43 Because of his years in government, Bill Moyers knew government better than most. And as a broadcaster covering politics, he was articulate and unafraid in describing and warning against what he saw. In 2013, two years before he retired, Moyers appeared on his PBS Moyers and Company program to give this frank assessment of the political status quo. And this was a dozen years ago when Barack Obama was president. We are so close to losing our democracy to the mercenary class. It's as if we're 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 are only this far from monopoly control over our government. They've bought the political system, lock, stock, and pork barrel, making change from within impossible.

5:33 That's the real joke. Sometimes I long for the wit of a John Stewart, a Steven Cobear. They treat this town as burlesque and with satire and parody show it the disrespect it deserves. We laugh and punch each other on the arm and tweet that the rascals got their just dessert. But the last laugh always seems to go to the bold-faced names that populate this town. To them belong the spoils of a looted city. If that sounds uncannily preient, try this. More than 10 years earlier, on an episode of Now with Bill Moyers on PBS in 2002, Bill Moyers warned against the results of the midterm elections, which had Republicans gaining control of both houses of Congress. And for the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government, the Congress, the executive, the courts, is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W.

6:28 Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming.

7:04 Moyers spoke passionately and perceptively about his times. And today on Fresh Air, we have four different examples of that, courtesy of his many conversations between Bill Moyers and Terry Gross. The first one we'll hear is from 2017 and was recorded about 8 months into Donald Trump's first term of office. Trump's latest attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act had just failed and Moyers was reflecting on how President Johnson had maneuvered Congress into enacting Medicare and Medicaid in the mid60s. Bill Moyers, welcome back to Fresh Air.

7:38 It is great to have you back again and I'm delighted to be here. So, in your article, you describe what healthc care was like in your family. Why don't you tell us about that at the time? And we're talking about the mid-30s. Well, in 1935 when Roosevelt made his proposal, I was one year old. My family was poor. The Great Depression had robbed my father of being a tenant farmer. He took a job for a dollar a day helping to build a highway in southeastern Oklahoma, a highway I think from Dallas to Oklahoma City. And my mother was marked all of her life by the fact that she had lost twin girls. One at birth and one some months later, I don't remember just how many, because the nearest doctor, the only doctor, was too far away to get through the countryside in his horse and buggy in time to help. So eventually my mother and dad moved into town and to pay the doctor who did deliver me. My father

8:41 carried by hand very large sandy stones to the site that the physician had bought to build his first office. It's still there. So all through my life, I was reminded of what it had meant to my parents and my family and of course to many others of that generation and beyond who didn't have coverage and good health care when they most needed it. Truman tried and failed to pass a version of Medicare. Then Kennedy and LBJ made it a plank in their platform. You write that, you know, Kennedy's death helped Lyndon Johnson actually enact that agenda. How did LBJ use Kennedy's death to try to unite people behind the passage of Medicare?

9:28 Well, he knew that Kennedy's program was um that his proposals on healthc care and civil rights and others were very important but were stalled in Congress and and on the plane back from Dallas on Air Force One coming back from Dallas with the new president and a small codory of aids and friends in the front compartment. and LBJ intuitively felt that that this was the moment to try to move what had been a stalled agenda in the Congress. And so in his first major address to Congress a few days after the funeral of Kennedy, Johnson said in that slow Texas draw of his, "But with genuine conviction, "Let us continue."

10:16 And that kind of sparked the uh awakening of America from their deep grief and a realization that life had to go on. Government had to work. So you became Lyndon Johnson's press secretary. So you were his press secretary during the passage of Medicare right? Well, the first two years in the White House, I came back with him from Dallas, went right to the White House with him, stayed in his home for a few days, and then although I at the time was the deputy director of the Peace Corps and wanted to go back to the Peace Corps, he insisted I stay. And my first major assignment, I had two major assignments in 1964. one was to manage the uh his campaign for election in November in his own right. But the most important assignment I had was to put together the task forces that would lead to the legislative program of 1965. That included, by the way, the public broadcasting act, which was passed in

11:11 1967. It include education. It included poverty and it included health insurance. So for 15 months I worked intensely helping to shape that legislation including Medicare. Then in the mid part of 1965 as he had run through two or three press secretaries he insisted that I take that job and and and I did reluctantly. Why were you reluctant? I loved what I was doing. I mean I loved I at first I wanted to go back to the peace court when I could first get free. Secondly, I thought creating this legislation and working with some of the best minds in government and from around the country was exhilarating. It was exhausting, but it was exhilarating. And there was something coming out of it.

11:56 There was something being uh uh being created that would make a real difference in the lives of Henry and Ruby Moyers and Marshall, Texas, and millions of people like them. That I liked doing that. I like the anonymity of it. it was easier to get things done when you were not uh Scaramucci or Bannon or somebody like that. And u the second thing is I did not want to be press secretary. I mean the third time he asked me I couldn't say no. I said no twice. The third time he insisted and I still have a sore shoulder from that encounter. And I went home and that night I said to my wife as we went to bed, "Well, this is the beginning of the end." And she said, "Why?" And I said, "Because obviously appealing to the New Testament with which I was familiar, no man can serve two masters." And I just didn't want to get caught in the middle between the press and the president. I loved what I had been doing and I didn't

12:50 covet that job. And the truth of the matter is in time, as I anticipated, our credibility was so bad we couldn't believe our own leaks. Well, that was in part because of the war in Vietnam, right? Yes. mainly it was also because Lynon Johnson you know was a 13 of the most complex people I ever knew. Uh and it was you had to deal with a different persona from day to day or from week to week and sometimes it was it was difficult to figure out who he was at that particular time and you'd find yourself uh contradicting yourself even though you hadn't intended to. when I took the job, when it was announced, my father sent me a telegram. And he said, "Bill, telegram, most of your listeners don't know what a telegram is, but uh it was then a a tweet that took a long time to come by wire and paper, but but he said, "Bill, tell the truth if you can, but if you can't tell the truth, don't tell a lie." and I tried very hard to

13:47 walk that line. Sometimes I fell on the other on the wrong side of it, but it was a tough and tenuous uh assignment. So Johnson had quite a reputation for being like a brilliant tactician um in in Congress. Give us an example of an arm he twisted or a deal he made to get an essential vote. Well, he had very effective powers of persuasion. He knew how to phrase an issue uh or a challenge so that it would it would connect to people who had to vote on it in the House and Senate. I mean when we were working on uh our bill in in 1965 I and others had u urged that the Medicare bill this fresh air I'm critic for a billy retro who made significant contributions to presidential politics and policies newspapers and network TV news and was an early proponent of public television.

14:49 I think it's fine to be resist. I think it can be defended on we'll listen back to excerpts on many basis in Congress than this but we'll begin with this appreciation that it affects the economy. Bill Moyers was born in 1934 Oklahoma and raised in Marshall Texas. By age 16 he was a cub reporter for the Marshall News Messenger. In 1954, while attending Texas State College and majoring in journalism, he got a summer job interviewing for his state senator, Lyndon Bit by writing LBJ a letter that said, quote, I can tell you something about young people in Texas if you can tell me something about politics. He said, you go to them and became an ordained minister in 1959. crossed paths with LDJ again when Johnson was running as vice president on the Democratic ticket with Johnson. Congress when they passed stuck around to help design Kennedy's peace program and after Kennedy was assassinated was on Air Force One to

15:50 witness sworn in as the new find the money to pay for grand worked on Johnson's pivotal political achievements including acting right and such great society programs as Medicare and their own generation when Johnson was running for reelection in 1964 who helped LBJ Republican candidate by creating the most famous political ad in TV history with a little girl plucking a daisy while counting down to a nuclear explosion of threats from 1965 to 1967 Moyers was LBJ's White House press secretary knew he also was a member of the commission that led to the creation of public television and he knew that some after falling out with Johnson over his Vietnam policies Moyers retired from politics he became publisher of New on a river where he hired Hamilton and won two priision mark if you don't he began working in public television almost something to get in 1976 reporting for a local station he won his first Peabody award

17:00 for an extended interview with a then little known Georgia politician named JVC would evolve into the PBS series Bill Moyer's journal which also knows what's going on with seven other programs over the decades. We're listening back to mostly at PBS but also at spoke about 8 months Donald retirement from in 2015. Sean Spicer was Trump's first white house president was awarded a life reser total of an from 1965 to 196. Bill Moyers told me once in an interview. He went on to say, "And I think that is what essentially television has enabled me to do. It is the largest classroom in America's office.

17:49 The apex of Bill Moyers as a TV teacher came in 1988 with the six part PBS series Joseph Campbell and the power of myth with Bill Moyers. As author and professor had devoted his life to the study of comparative mythologies and religions was almost certainly Campbell would die before his recorded conversations with Moyers were televised but his message was delivered. to 30 million viewers to describe as guide was a genuine malevolent furies allowing one to deliver his famous three-word inspirational for chaos follow you ever have this sense when you follow the heart as I have the process I don't get it and I don't know how to explain it you have to watch I watch the miraculous splain the chaos invisible hands coming all the time. Namely that if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind that's been there while waiting for you and the life that you want to be living a different reality and everybody else can

19:02 see it those who are trying to deal with people who are in the field of your weird and they open doors to I say follow your bliss and don't be afraid and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. in one of your articles. Because of his years in government, Bill Moyers knew government better than most. And as a broadcaster covering politics, he was articulate and unafraid in describing and warning against what he saw. In 2013, two years before he retired, Moyers appeared on his PBS Moyers and Company program to give this frank assessment of the political status quo.

19:39 And this was a dozen years ago when Barack Obscen the Trump administration religious, you know, they're lying. They're deceiving us. And if you don't call that out, then the lie becomes a part of the lived experience of the people watching or listening from wouldn't have lasted. Pier Solinger wouldn't have lasted. James Hagerty wouldn't have lasted long stewart of Steven. They treat his town as life and parody. Show it the disrespect. Billy, it's been great to talk with you again. Thank you so much for coming to our show that the rascals got their for being who you are. But the last laugh always from an interview with Terry recorded in 2017 to them. When Terry spoke to him in 1996, the subject was his series of genocally one of his many programs exploring more than 10 years earlier before he episode theological seminary. Bill Moyer was warned against the results of the midterm elections which had the public

20:49 controls of crisis or doubt and for the first time in the memory of anyone alive the entire federal government is united behind a rightwing agenda. for which Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda for life. If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming.

21:38 Moyer spoke passionately and perceptive about his times. And today on Fresh Air, we have four different examples of courtesy of his many conversations about the first is from 2017 and was recorded about 8 months into Donald Trump's first term of office. Trump's latest attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act had just failed and was reflecting on how President Johnson had maneuvered Congress into enacting Medicare and Medicaid in the patient conniving the loving face rivalry violence infertility and surrogate in your article you describe what was like I read these stories now reflections of the human experience and we're talking about in the life of a of a believing person and I do 1935 Uh when Roosevelt made his proposal, I was a one-year-old for a few years. I think my family was poor.

22:34 You wouldn't call it a few years. You wouldn't call a farmer. He took a job for I think one of the reasons I didn't pursue that is that I just never came out quite right. I never felt comfortable doing it. My mother intended to teach. I wanted signed up when I finished my PhD at university in American civilization. And I wanted to look at religion as a phenomenon in American life. That's why incidentally, yes, I went out to small churches on Sundays and my rich on on the loving congregation, mostly farmers and their father.

23:15 Well, I'm wondering if anybody ever came up to you and asked Stones for for advice about what the Bible had to say about their bought to build his first office. It's still a very scary experience through my life. I was reminded also what it had meant to my parents and my family of that generation and beyond. They didn't have coverage and sisters sisters. They must have been in their late Truman tried and failed to pass Medicare then Kennedy and LBJ made it on their platform. You're right that you know Kennedy's death and Johnson enact that agenda.

23:54 How did LBJ one Sunday use Kennedy's death to try to unite people behind the passage of medic? They knew that Kennedy's program was his proposals on healthare and civil rights and others were very important but were stalled in Congress and on the plane back from Dallas Air Force One coming back from Dallas. They've been having the president and a small cod of a friends in their front compartment and LBJ intuitively felt that this was the moment to try to move what had been a stalled agenda in the Congress. And so in his first major address to Congress a few days after the funeral, Kennedy, Johnson said in that slow Texas of his, but with genuine conviction, let us continue. Minister brought in his faith kind of sparked the awakening of America from their deep grief and realization that government had to work that. So you became Lyndon Jones the name of a leading. So you were his press secretary

25:05 during the pastologist who taught Medicare right at the university school of well the first two years I came back with him from Dallas to help serious issues and then although I at the time was bring my first major assignment two major assignments in 1964 was to manage the his campaign for election in his own right but the most important assignment I had was to put together the task forces that would lead to the legislative program in 1965 that included by the way the public broadcasting act of the secular passed in 1967. It included education included poverty and it included health insurance. So for 15 months I worked intensely helping to shape that legislation including Medicare. Then in the mid part of 19 as he had run through two or three press secret insisted that I think and I did reluctantly find some uh why were you reluctant some something that would give them I loved what I was doing I mean I love

26:13 Ibri secondly I thought about his PBS series on government and from the focus wasn't exhilarating it was about trying to live a decent life in the face and there was something coming out and on the movement to improve care at the end of life including creating new approaches make a real difference in the lives of Henry and Ruby Moyers Marshall Texas lead a national discussion now on the subject of death I discussed in your family when it was easier to get things done when you were not or somebody like that and the second thing is I did not want to be press secretary I mean the third time he asked my say no. I said no twice. The third time he assisted and I still have a sore shoulder from that encounter. I went home and that night I said to my wife as we went to bed, well this is the beginning of the end. And she said why?

27:10 And I said because obviously appealing to the New Testament with which I was familiar no man can serve two and I just didn't want to get caught in the middle and I loved what I had been doing and I didn't covet that job. And the truth of the matter is in time as I anticipated our credibility was so we couldn't believe our own lead that was in part because the war in Vietnam church. Yes. Mainly it was also because Lynon Johnson you know was a 13 of the most complex people I ever knew. My father and it was you had to deal with a different persona day to day or week to week. Sometimes it was difficult to figure out who he was at that particular time and you'd find yourself contradicting yourself even though you had took the job when it was announced. My father sent me a telegram. He said Bill most of your listeners don't know what a telegram is but it was then a tweet that took a long time to come by

28:10 wire and paper but but he said Bill went too early. Tell the truth if you can. What was it like for you to tell the truth brother died at a young age and I tried very hard to be sometimes I felt like on the wrong side of another world tough and tenuous you don't expect your 39year-old brother to die. So Johnson had quite a reputation for being tactician um in in Congress. Give us an example of an arm he twisted or dealt to get an essential vote uh disappear from your life. effective polic issue I don't think are a challenge so that it would naturally connect people just a few years before your brother died I mean when we were working on close to one of the most traumatic and others of the century the assassination JFK I think you were even on air force one with the body carrying him back for a retroactive increase that must have thrown your security payments because they would be an economic

29:17 stimulation. I think it can be defended. I think Medicare can be defended on a hell of a better basis in Congress than this. I mean, that's what happened affects the economy. It helps Texas with the chairman of the state democratic executive committee. That's not the basis of Texas. We were celebrating. It's not the justification of we just got to say that by God to Texas. You can't treat that president request entitled and we promised it to her beautifully when he had big respons. He said, "You go to them and you say one day their grandson or their granddaughter is going to look back and say, "My grandfather was in the Congress when they passed Medicare."

30:18 You know, those grandchildren are going to be so grateful to you and their parents are going to be so grateful to you because they didn't have to find the money to pay for grandma and grandpa. You go to them and say they can brag that they were there when the moment came to decide for their parents and their own generation. I can tell you one after I saw the light go off in one congressional face after another when that argument was made. You're writing history about itchild and then of course tough game of threat and against members of Congress and didn't vote for it. he could offer a dam. You know, he knew Lynon Johnson was a genius in knowing everyone's price on that plane.

31:06 And he knew that some senators just wanted to bring their wives to dinner at the White House. Some senators wanted a damn built on a river in their home state. Uh he knew how to trade. He once said, you know, the cardinal rule of what you're doing up in Congress is if you don't got something to give, you're not going to get something to give. And in other words, you got silence on the What all of this shows is is that it takes a president who is informed and engaged in the legislative process respecting the differences between the takes somebody who knows what's going on.

31:46 That's how he worked at it sitting there at the blood stain. We're listening back to Terry's 2017 interview with Bill. Suddenly the world had been silent. They spoke about eight months into Donald Trump's first term as president. None of us knew Sean Spicer was Trump's first White House press secretary, but he resigned early in the term and was replaced by Sarah Huckabe Sanders. Moyers also was a White House press secretary from 1965 to 1967 when Lyndon Johnson family is supposed to take time to fall apart if they need to.

32:16 But as a political professional, your job is to make sure things didn't fall apart moving forward. So, so what's your impression? It was almost automatic. Liz Carpenter and Jack was on that plane. Lady was on that plane. And and decision started being made wary of criticizing always press secretary. It's a hard job under any circuit

32:47 recovered. I mean, it's hard to be the most awkward moment I can imagine to describe adequately for my viewers or readers having to choice have been released into our body politics for chaos which is a dagger being twisted in the heart of the political process. I don't get it and I don't ever explain it. You have to watch I watch the briefings of Sean Spicer to see if I can understand. I will always and explain the chaos that admiration of the sensitive way and brilliant successful press secretaries. We've never had this situation to him where the president is living in a different reality from everybody else including trying to get information those who are trying to survey the FBI in the White House regarding the Kennedy assassin. It's a weird bizarre and very very difficult to one moment.

33:49 So in one of your articles you called Kellyanne Conway the queen of silence. He was preoccupied in his own mind and he wasing out was not a perfect president but I did feel that the job was to try to we were told to leave the shapes reporters get what they needed to tell the person understand what the reporters were trying I never did think of myself as a propandist for the administration itself people I'm listening to and have been watching titled the Trump administration who's taken the oath. They're really just, you know, they're lying. What are you thinking?

34:28 They're deceiving us. And if you don't call that out, then the lie becomes a part of the lived experience of people who are watching attack last James behind this. We wouldn't have this week precipitation of of some conflict with the president that we served. Uh, of course we were quickly It's been great to talk with you again. Thank you so much for coming back to Russia. How that played on his mind. Thank you Terry for being who you are. Bill Moyers speaking with Terry Gross. Bill Moyers from an interview with Terry including our tribute journalist Bill Moyers who died last night when Terry spoke to him in 1996 with an interview he was about one of his many commentaries on America. Before he became a time studied at Southwestern theological seminary when Bush president of the United States Terry asked him turned to the control during times of crisis or doubt.

35:25 He said you think that this is a difficult for you think the meaning of mainstream has changed an argument the Bible and say it earlier in your journalistic career were considered extreme but are now considered mainstream in a in a in a in a Yes. I Baptist church that was emphasiz thinking for yourself what we call the priesthood of the believer. You had to read the Bible with its meaning bringing to bear the best teaching and we have faith in taking federal scholarship putting them behind religious organizations. So do not have never been to the Bible for that kind of general as a life guidelines as a life jacket as a pill to pop down. I think I think the the inclusion of religion woven in the policies as opposed to I read these stories as moral agent operating mirrors in a way of our own individual journeys.

36:22 That's what gets me about his moral exciting part going back talking with these stories that sense of government as the enemy. These stories speak to us as far as they are so human people in Genesis rage at one another. They struggle with jealous patient. They're conniving loving. They're hateful. And the dilemmas they face are our sibling rivalry. family violence, infertility and surrogate saw this coming of what I read these stories now more as I saw coming because my experience in the campaign of 19 of a young and we were walking them for instruction from the Waldorf you preached for a few years I think before entering politics you wouldn't call it a few years you wouldn't call it preaching women red oh I was pretty I think one of the reasons I didn't pursue that is that I just Their faces were never came out quite right. Never felt comfortable. I actually intended to teach signed up when I finished my led by

37:28 Congress in American civilization. And I wanted to look at religion as a as a phenomenon in American life. That's what I intended to do. to surround churches on Sundays and inflicted my amateurish wisdom on women very patient and loving congregation mostly farmers and Mrs. Johnson. It was well I'm wondering if anybody ever came up to you and asked you for for for advice about what the Bible had to say about their could not believe what we had just experienced was thought it was probably a turning off the election I was in Kenned and I both said for a moment and realized I was in this church what had unleashed these things I must have been in there. It was the first time I had seen what can happen become ferocious in their anime toward the other person. And so I was aware of that for time and I saw it beginning to with the rise of the religious be furious in religion is to be furiously religious not quite

38:36 21 and I could see that happening. politics university that righteous ination that transformed transformed politics from committed to a confession conquest protestant church but this was a confession critics of public television they've been having say that it is part of incestuous relation with their brother and they needed help and I'm wondering what you hear when you hear the words by this and they needed help paired with and what did I have to tell well first I want to know who's saying it and why they're saying it is Russian fumbling something uh is it an adversary broadcasting somebody broadcasting down?

39:14 I don't get that from the taxi drivers who brought me here today. I went to and marvelous man who was a great with generous his voice that minister his children in his faith and learned it in his public television

39:34 but I don't get it from the university and he gave me the name of the lead radio have information available to them otherwise I don't consider myself very serious issue elitist from Marshall Texas education my mother great education so the next time I went out I didn't see them in years to gain a position in life in which to see a lot of things that I didn't feel couldn't tell them they didn't think psychology and the fact of the matter is I think that the greatest travesty happening in the right now is the hollowing out of the middle class and the exploitation of the working class easy for of the secular world opponents and they never follow warriors at the top that was realized at that moment that kind of reporting kind of journalism calling it elite opinion hunger for some for some liberal media and that's what a lot of conservative critics didn't it wasn't easy about publicing I mean your

40:42 opinions on your show I mean you are liberal so is that do you see that as a problem calling. Let's continue with our tribute to television journalist Bill Moyes. Think that one of Terry spoke with Moyers again in 2000 about his PBS series on death and dying. The focus wasn't just on diet. It also was about trying to live a decent life in the face of death and on the movement to improve care at the end of life. Same kind of new approaches to pain relief and hospital that make them liberal. You're trying to lead a national discussion now on the subject of death and dying. Was death discussed in your family when you were growing up?

41:18 Has been the right wing's ability to make people when they was all around my mother. But liberal if it means social security I'm for it. If it means public education I'm protecting the environment. If that makes me liberal, it makes me liberal. But uh but my mother my father I still think of liberals as being open to conversation epidemic and trying to be inclusive. Death was a constant in our embrace the lives of my of my family and I was just there and not run from it because Russim was just talked about in terms of Bill O'Reilly and others my father active in you were at the meeting in 1964 that led to the creation of public broadcasting.

42:07 You write about this a little bit in your new book on America elders of the church organized themselves. This was in 1964 in the office of education to discuss my father educational 1:00 in the morning or 2:00. He would go down for an hour and just sit there in the pres. What do you remember of the mission as it was discussed in the proto public broadcasting era back other men in the church did it too. The mission of public broadcasting was to create a limited channel that would be free not only of what did your brother die of commercial values a a broadcasting system that would serve uh the life of the mind that would uh encourage that brother die at large documentaries travel it was to be an alternative at that time I think the most important thing that we can do is to continue to Treat Americans as citizens not just consumers.

43:05 You just don't expect an audience of consumers, you want to sell them something. If you look out and see an audience, you want to share something loss, a sudden emptiness there is a difference. And I think public broadcasting, public radio television, it takes a good while to come to be locked to the commitment to seeing America as death is ever accepted not as consumer. Somehow if we accept that as our bas serving close to one of the most traumatic billy assassination of JFK he retired from 11 years later in 2015 when he was from Texas.

43:46 Bill Moyers died last Thursday. Must have thrown your life into upheaval.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Remembering renowned Broadcaster Bill Moyers | Fresh Air"?

David B. Culie (Host), Bill Moyers (Guest), Terry Gross (Host).

What is "Remembering renowned Broadcaster Bill Moyers | Fresh Air" about?

Bill Moyers, a pivotal figure in American journalism and politics, passed away at 91, leaving behind a legacy of significant contributions to presidential campaigns, public television, and landmark legislation during the Johnson administration. Renowned for his impactful interviews and the creation of the iconic "Daisy" political ad, Moyers’ career spanned from his early reporting in Texas to…

What is mentioned in this Fresh Air episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Bill Moyers, Lynen Baines Johnson, Fresh Air, George Herbert Walker Bush, Daisy ad, Texas State College. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Remembering renowned Broadcaster Bill Moyers | Fresh Air"?

The episode runs 44 min; the transcript is about 6,884 words in 51 timestamped sections.

More from Fresh Air

• All analyzed episodes
• Books mentioned on Fresh Air
• People mentioned on Fresh Air
• Topics mentioned on Fresh Air