Bill Moyers, Friend of SEJ, Dead at 91 [1]
 |
| Bill Moyers. Photo [2]: Moyers and Company Facebook page. |
Bill Moyers, a great American who proudly called himself an environmental journalist, died June 26 [3], 2025 at the age of 91. He was one of SEJ’s “angels.”
One of his greatest achievements was a two-hour PBS documentary titled “Trade Secrets [4].” From a stash of not-quite secret documents, it revealed a long chemical industry effort to hide the toxicity of vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals from the public — and to squelch efforts to regulate them. During the effort to publish this ground-breaking investigation, he was personally attacked by the industry. He rebutted them [5]. The show was broadcast and his reputation grew. He was a man of deep integrity.
Moyers helped the Society of Environmental Journalists to survive these difficult times — first by inspiring us and second by engineering a major sustaining grant from the Schumann Foundation.
SEJ members were honored when Moyers delivered the Keynote at our 2005 annual conference. It was very inspirational — read the full text here [6] or listen here [7]. In those remarks, he cited an old maxim: “News is what people want to keep hidden, everything else is publicity.”