RIP: Bill Moyers, Elder Statesman of PBS Journalists, Dies at 91.

Bill Moyers, who carried an unblemished air of moral conviction* throughout a 43-year career as a broadcast journalist, mostly in his later years for PBS, died Thursday in Manhattan, the New York Times reported. He was91.

Moyers was characterized by an insatiable and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, but he was deeply concerned not only with how things are but how they should be.

He was also well known for his views that the mainstream media reflect the bias inherent in their ownership by giant corporations whose goals align with those of the right.** But despite uncovering disappointing behaviors on the part of politicians and various institutions over the years, Moyers was fundamentally an idealist.

* The moral conviction was certainly there in spades, but so were the blemishes:

● “Bill Moyers [asked] the FBI to investigate two men who were ‘suspected as having homosexual tendencies.’”

● “Whatever happened to Bill Moyers’s promise to disclose conflicts of interest?”

● “After 30 years of railing for separation of church and state, Bill Moyers comes to the aid of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”

** Comcast, Disney, CNN, and CBS could not be reached for comment.