比尔·莫耶斯

比尔·莫耶斯（英语：Bill Moyers，1934年6月5日—2025年6月26日）是一名美国记者和政治评论员。 1965年至1967年，他担任约翰逊政府的第十一任白宫新闻秘书。1967-1974年，他担任外交关系委员会主任。莫耶斯广泛参与公共广播、纪录片录制和新闻杂志节目。他的调查性新闻和公民活动赢得了无数奖项和荣誉学位。他已成为众所周知的公司结构的美国新闻媒体的尖锐批评者。

Billy Don Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025) was an American journalist and political commentator who served as the eleventh White House Press Secretary from 1965 to 1967 during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. He also served as the de facto White House Chief of Staff for a brief period from 1964 until 1965.

Moyers was a director of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1967 to 1974. He was also a onetime steering committee member of the annual Bilderberg Meeting. Moyers also worked as a network TV news commentator for ten years. Moyers was extensively involved with public broadcasting, producing documentaries and news journal programs, and won many awards and honorary degrees for his investigative journalism and civic activities. He was well known as a trenchant critic of the corporately structured U.S. news media.

Early life and education

Born Billy Don Moyers on June 5, 1934, in Hugo, Oklahoma, he was the son of John Henry Moyers, a laborer, and Ruby Johnson Moyers. Moyers was raised in Marshall, Texas.

Moyers began his journalism career at 16 as a cub reporter at the Marshall News Messenger. In college, he studied journalism at the North Texas State College in Denton, Texas. In 1954, U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson employed him as a summer campaign intern and eventually promoted him to manage Johnson's personal mail. Soon after, Moyers transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote for The Daily Texan newspaper. In 1956, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. While in Austin, Moyers served as assistant news editor for KTBC radio and television stations, owned by Lady Bird Johnson, Senator Johnson's wife. During the 1956–1957 academic year, he studied issues of church and state at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland as a Rotary International Fellow. In 1959, he completed a Master of Divinity degree at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Moyers served as Director of Information while attending SWBTS. He was also a Baptist pastor in Weir, Texas, near Austin.

Moyers planned to enter a Doctor of Philosophy program in American studies at the University of Texas. During Senator Johnson's unsuccessful bid for the 1960 Democratic U.S. presidential nomination, Moyers served as a top aide, and in the general campaign he acted as liaison between Democratic vice-presidential candidate Johnson and the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy and Johnson administrations

The Peace Corps

The Peace Corps was established by President Kennedy by Executive Order in March 1961, but it was up to top aide Sargent Shriver and Bill Moyers to find the funding to actually establish the organization. The Peace Corps Act was signed by President Kennedy on September 22, 1961. In Sarge, Scott Stossel reports that "Peace Corps legend has it that between them Moyers and Shriver personally called on every single member of Congress."

Reflecting 25 years later on the creation of the program Moyers said: ”We knew from the beginning that the Peace Corps was not an agency, program, or mission. Now we know—from those who lived and died for it—that it is a way of being in the world." At the 50th Anniversary “Salute to Peace Corps Giants”, hosted by the National Archives, Moyers said, "The years we spent at the Peace Corps were the best years of our lives.” Moyers gave the same answer in the famed Vanity Fair Proust questionnaire in 2011.

Moyers served first as associate director of public affairs and then as Sargent Shriver's deputy director before becoming special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson in November 1963.