FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: Bill Moyers, LBJ's press secretary and early FOIA supporter, dies at 91

FOIA News (2025)Allan BlutsteinComment

Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary turned acclaimed TV journalist, dead at 91

By Frazier Moore, AP, June 26, 2025

Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died Thursday at age 91.

Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former CEO of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Moyers’ son William said his father died at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York after a “long illness.”

Moyers’ career ranged from youthful Baptist minister to deputy director of the Peace Corps, from Johnson’s press secretary to newspaper publisher, senior news analyst for “The CBS Evening News” and chief correspondent for “CBS Reports.”

Read more here.

NB: Mr. Moyers drafted a signing statement for President Johnson on enacting the FOIA on July 4, 1966. See Moyers’ version and LBJ’s handwritten edits here.