Bill Moyers & the environment

Public understanding of science and the environment has been a major concern for some of the world’s leading journalists. This was especially true for publisher E.W. Scripps, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, and documentary producer Bill Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025).

A White House press secretary under Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, a CBS correspondent and PBS program producer since the 1960s, Moyers won every important award in television journalism, including a lifetime Emmy, for his innovative and thoughtful programs on public affairs.  Perhaps his best known was the PBS series “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.”

Unfortunately, Moyers was not as well known for his views on the erosion of environmental science and public information in America. “Once the leader in cutting edge environmental policies and technologies and awareness, America is now eclipsed,” Moyers said in a 2005 speech.  “As the scientific evidence grows, pointing to a crisis, our country has become an impediment to action, not a leader.”

Moyers blamed unconventional and deceitful practices by environmentally unfriendly corporations who managed to influence behind-the-scenes decisions in newsrooms through legal threats and public relations campaigns. In an Oct. 1, 2005 keynote speech to the 2005 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, Moyers said:

“If the environmental movement is pronounced dead, it won’t be from self-inflicted wounds. We don’t blame slavery on the slaves, the Trail of Tears on the Cherokees, or the Srebrenica massacre on the bodies in the grave. No, the lethal threat to the environmental movement comes from the predatory power of money and the pathological enmity of rightwing ideology.” Text of Moyers’ speech is available here.      

Audio of the speech is available here.

Moyers & Company reports on environment and climate change are available here.

Extra! Moyers address to the AEJMC  aejmc082007billmoyers  ( Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications ) August 2007.