It’s a sad day for journalism when someone like Bill Moyers decides to retire. On top of his work in the press over the years, his Power of Myth series brought the works of Joseph Campbell to millions. NPR reports:
Journalist Bill Moyers retires from PBS and his weekly show, the Bill Moyers Journal, on Friday.
In honor of the public broadcasting legend, Fresh Air is rebroadcasting segments from several Moyers appearances over the years, including conversations about his time in the Johnson administration and his thoughts on religion, war and the future of journalism.
Moyers, who has spent the past 40 years in broadcast journalism, started working for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1954, after writing the then-Senate majority leader a letter. He would later serve as a special assistant and a press secretary to the president.
Moyers left the Johnson administration in 1967 to work for the Long Island, N.Y., daily newspaper Newsday. For the next three years, Moyers published the newspaper, which won two Pulitzer prizes during his tenure.
In 1971, Moyers left Newsday for PBS, where he began hosting his flagship show, Bill Moyers Journal. The weekly public affairs show ran on and off until 1981, when Moyers became a senior news analyst for the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. Moyers returned to PBS to host NOW with Bill Moyers in 2002, and in 2007 relaunched Bill Moyers Journal with an episode that criticized journalists for failing to question the Bush administration in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In an interview at the time, Moyers told Terry Gross that his service in the Johnson administration helped him keep a critical eye on the reasons America had gone to war.
[Read more at NPR]
