For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Amaris Castillo.
Bill Moyers, who once served as press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson before becoming an acclaimed broadcast journalist for decades, died Thursday. He was 91. According to The Washington Post, his son, William Cope Moyers, cited complications from prostate cancer as the cause.
According to the bio on his official website, Moyers, who was born in Hugo, Okla., began his journalism career at age 16 as a cub reporter for his hometown daily newspaper in Marshall, Texas. In a 2015 Twin Cities PBS special, “A Conversation with Bill Moyers,” the veteran journalist spoke with Don Shelby about his humble beginnings.
“You were the son of one of the poorest people in town,” Shelby said to Moyers before an audience. “Anywhere else, in any other time, you wouldn’t have had much of a shot. How did it happen, that a poor boy, got the shot you got?”
Moyers said he was the beneficiary “of affirmative action for poor white Southern boys.” If you studied and worked hard, he said, there were people in town, particularly men, who would lend their support. Moyers said he received a scholarship from a rotary club. There were many people who supported him along the way.
Moyers would later become a founding organizer of the Peace Corps and serve as LBJ’s press secretary from 1965 to 1967. According to journalist Fred A. Bernstein, Moyers “relished his role in shaping Great Society programs to alleviate poverty and foster racial justice, but he grew rapidly disillusioned with Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War.” He left the White House in January 1967, in the middle of the president’s second term. The president, Moyers recalled, never spoke to him again.
As a journalist — mostly at PBS — Moyers would go on to earn more than 30 Emmy Awards, two prestigious Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Awards, nine Peabodys and three George Polk Awards.
“Bill Moyers was a very important journalist of his time,” said Al Tompkins, Poynter senior faculty emeritus.
Moyers also hosted a weekly public affairs series titled “Bill Moyers Journal,” which aired from 2007 until 2010. Tompkins described the show as one of the leading examinations of faith in America.
“He talked so thoughtfully about faith,” Tompkins said of Moyers. “And not just Christianity, but faith, in ways that very few have both the fiber and the knowledge, and maybe even the demeanor, to be able to talk about.”
Tompkins said he always found it curious that Moyers was able to talk about what’s usually a divisive subject with such candor and balance. He noted that the throughline on virtually every major military action is some element of religion. Major disagreements in front of the Supreme Court often have religious overtones. Additionally, thoughts on major issues in America and abroad — abortion and book banning, for example — have a connection to religion.
“And yet, how often do you actually ever hear thoughtful, open conversations about faith and religion? So while it is a central part of what motivates people’s ideals and actions, it’s seldom seriously discussed, certainly not on network news,” Tompkins said. “Moyers was the exception to that, and embraced this idea that we really do need to have serious, thoughtful conversations about faith and reason. And he put those two words together, ‘faith and reason,’ which I think are two interesting words not normally put together.”
Here’s more on Moyers’ impressive career from Fred A. Bernstein in The Washington Post.
A powerful message
Pamela Alma Weymouth, granddaughter of the late legendary Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, has written a piece for The Nation about the Post’s current publisher: “My Grandmother Stood Up to Nixon — Jeff Bezos Should Take Note.” Weymouth writes that her family’s decision to sell the paper to Bezos in 2013 was gut-wrenching, but that they trusted him, and that he had always honored the Post’s famous phrase of “Democracy dies in the darkness.”
But that changed.
Weymouth notes that Bezos has retreated from his dedication to unbiased journalism under a more tyrannical Donald Trump. She understands it’s hard to stand up to a president, but then again, her grandmother stood up to threats from President Richard Nixon back in the day. Weymouth writes, “Real American patriotism does not force journalists to deliver government propaganda. My grandmother was a real patriot; she protected the rights of her journalists to deliver the facts and speak their minds — without fear of censorship.”
Weymouth said she has considered canceling her subscription to the Post, but has not yet, adding, “I see the journalists who continue to expose hard-hitting facts about the inhumane, unconstitutional actions of this administration.”
Check out the entirety of her powerful piece, which concludes with, “If the free press can be manipulated by politicians, if truth is viewed as optional, if The Washington Post goes dark under Bezos, then we lose more than a legend. We lose the very thing that makes America a democracy. Bezos had a choice. He could have reversed course. Honored the promise he made to protect this American institution. My grandmother faced down an immoral president. Bezos has chosen to go down as the man who destroyed The Washington Post — and dismantled its soul.”
End of an era
Anna Wintour, the legendary editor-in-chief of Vogue, is stepping down after 37 years. Several outlets are reporting she made the announcement at a staff meeting on Wednesday. While Wintour, 75, is giving up the day-to-day oversight of Vogue, she will continue to be Condé Nast's chief content officer and Vogue's global editorial director. A new editor-in-chief has not yet been named.
Wintour is known for her impeccable style, her forward thinking in the publishing industry and a no-nonsense, intimidating management style that is believed to have been the inspiration behind Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Miranda Priestly in the 2006 film, “The Devil Wears Prada.” (“The Devil Wears Prada” was first a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger, who was once a real-life assistant to Wintour.)
Wintour, born in London in 1949, took over Vogue in 1988 from former editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella.
CNN’s Jacqui Palumbo and Oscar Holland wrote, “As Vogue’s editor-in-chief, she reinvented the publication, transforming an increasingly unadventurous title into a powerhouse that could set and destroy both trends and designers.”
They added, “Though magazines shouldn’t be judged by their covers alone, Wintour’s covers signaled that she was unafraid of spotlighting lesser-known figures and eschewing the norms of high-end fashion titles. Her first issue, published in November 1988, was fronted by Israeli model Michaela Bercu in a pair of stonewashed jeans — the first time that jeans had ever appeared on Vogue’s cover. This set a tone for the hundreds of issues that followed, and Wintour would go on to make countless editorial decisions her predecessors would have considered unimaginable.”
Media news, tidbits and interesting links for you weekend review
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