September 13, 2023 American Archive of Public Broadcasting to Add New Collection: 50 Years of Programs from Journalist Bill Moyers

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting announced today that it has collected more than 1,000 public television programs produced by veteran broadcast journalist Bill Moyers, and more than 800 of them are available to stream online. The new Bill Moyers Collection in the archive offers a look at more than 50 years of Bill Moyers’ work reporting on our times, during which he became a unique voice in American life. 

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is a collaboration between Boston public media producer GBH and the Library of Congress to preserve and make accessible culturally significant public radio and television programs from across the country. 

Moyers joined public media soon after the publication of his best-selling book “Listening to America,” and made The Life of the Mind and The World of Ideas regular beats on television through conversations with writers, artists and scientists including Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Wendell Berry, Joseph Campbell, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Judy Collins, Bill Gates, Bill T. Jones, Toni Morrison, Harry Bridges, Leon Kass, August Wilson, Sheldon Wolin, Salman Rushdie, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Supreme Court justices Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, Lewis Powell, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

“To have our decades of work preserved in such a way – where anyone can come online and visit so many hours of programming – is an unexpected honor,” said Bill Moyers. “That the American Archive of Public Broadcasting is making this possible will allow viewers for generations to come to see what mattered to us over the years – and how we covered our times through the stories of contemporary democracy and its struggle to survive and thrive as well as the perceptions of many of our society’s foremost thinkers and creators.”

Moyers began his journalism career at age 16 as a cub reporter for his hometown newspaper in Marshall, Texas. He was a founding organizer and deputy director of the Peace Corps and served in the Johnson Administration as White House Press Secretary from 1965 to 1967. Moyers went on to leadership positions at Newsday, “CBS Reports” and “CBS Evening News” before beginning his career in public television in 1971. Moyers later founded Public Affairs Television with the veteran broadcast journalist Joan Konner and was soon joined by his wife and creative partner Judith Davidson Moyers. Public Affairs Television was widely acclaimed for its innovative and courageous exploration of subjects including politics, the environment, the role of the media in democracy and the world of ideas. Public Affairs Television was also a leader within public television in extending the reach of its broadcasts through the creative use of multimedia campaigns aimed at informing Americans of critical issues and involving them in cooperative efforts for the renewing of democracy. In 2015 Public Affairs Television began digitizing Moyers’ work, much of which is managed and distributed by Doctoroff Media Group. 

Moyers produced series such as “Bill Moyers Journal” (1972-1976, 1979-1981 and 2007-2010), “NOW with Bill Moyers” (2002-2004) and “Moyers & Company” (2012-2015). Other notable productions include the landmark “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth” (1988), “Healing and the Mind” (1993), “The Language of Life” (1995), “Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home” (1998), “On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying” (2000), “America’s First River” (2002), “Becoming American: The Chinese Experience” (2003), “Faith and Reason” (2006), and “Moyers on America” (2006). 

Moyers and his colleagues have been honored with numerous awards including more than 35 Emmy Awards, nine Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Awards, four Peabody Awards, and three George Polk Awards. Moyers also received the inaugural Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the American Film Institute and the Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association. He has been honored by the Television Critics Association for outstanding career achievement and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

“The Bill Moyers Collection offers a wealth of engaging and probing conversations with leading thinkers, authors, artists, and political figures of our times, along with penetrating investigative reports covering many conflicts and issues that have animated the past 50 years and beyond,” said Alan Gevinson, Library of Congress project director for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. “We are deeply honored to host this remarkable collection.”

The full Bill Moyers Collection can be viewed in the archive at americanarchive.org. 

Event: 50 Years of Bill Moyers Added to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Thursday, Sept. 28

7 p.m., Coolidge Auditorium 

Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building 

10 First Street, SE, Washington, D.C.

Attendance is free and open to the public with RSVP

Veteran journalists Bill Moyers and Judy Woodruff, chair of the executive advisory council of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, will be at the Library of Congress for a conversation and screening to mark the induction of five decades of Moyers’ programs into the archive. They will discuss changes in the media and journalism over more than five decades, their experience covering America and foreign affairs, the civil rights movement, race, and the clash of ideologies, including challenges to democracy from capital, extremism, and growing conflicts over the freedom of democracy.   

About the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation to coordinate a national effort to preserve at-risk public media before its content is lost to posterity and provide a central web portal for access to the unique programming that public stations have aired over the past 70 years. To date, over 150,000 digital files of television and radio programming contributed by more than 430 public media organizations, producers and archives across the United States have been preserved and made accessible for long-term preservation and access. The entire collection is available on location at the Library of Congress and GBH, and nearly 100,000 files are available online at americanarchive.org.