John Moyers

John Moyers

Overview

* Founder and former editor-in-chief of the Internet journal TomPaine.com
* Son of PBS television host Bill Moyers


John Moyers is the son of longtime PBS television personality Bill Moyers.

From January to November 1988, he was the news director for two small radio stations in rural Vermont, WCVR-FM and WWWT-AM.

From December 1988 to December 1989, he was a staff reporter for the Addison Independent, a bi-weekly newspaper.

From January 1990 to September 1991, he was a producer, reporter, and syndicator for “Let’s Talk Trash,” non-profit radio spots exploring America’s culture of disposable convenience and its impact on the environment.

From October 1991 to March 1993, he was a public-affairs staffer for the Sierra Club.

From May 1993 to May 1998, Moyers was executive director of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation (FJSF), which later became known as the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. Moyers’ Linkedin page describes FJSF as a “small, progressive foundation supporting independent media; research and reporting to expose the corrosive effect of private money on public politics; efforts to devise new approaches to campaign finance reform; and grassroots environmental activism.”

In June 1998, Moyers founded the Internet journal TomPaine.com, which featured news and editorials reflecting the left-wing perspectives of contributing writers such as Robert Borosage, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Tom Hayden. While serving as TomPaine’s editor-in-chief and executive director until September 2003,  Moyers himself wrote more than 120 “op ads,” as he dubbed them, on such topics as campaign-finance reform, the environment, war, race, and poverty. In 2001 he was named as one of six “New Media Heroes” by AlterNet.org.

Moyers also served a stint as executive director of the Florence Fund — a subsidiary charity of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy — which bankrolled TomPaine.com as well as a host of left-wing organizations such as the Earth Day Network, Earthjustice, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

In an April 2003 ad campaign titled “The Only Peace Demonstration the President Can’t Ignore,” Moyers urged Americans to “register for peace” by becoming registered voters and then casting their ballots against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. ”Peace’ isn’t just ‘anti-war,’” Moyers co-wrote with Vermont Auditor of Accounts Elizabeth Ready in a companion piece to the ad. “It summarizes in a word the concepts of economic and environmental justice, civil rights, equality, democracy and compassion.”

In June 2003, Moyers characterized President Bush as: a “liar” who had “proposed cutting veterans’ benefits and sidestepped a law meant to protect the health of soldiers headed for combat”; a “hard-hearted radical [who] would push his Robin-Hood-in-reverse tax policies”; and a rogue politician whose foreign policies had “profoundly divided the international community, isolated America and devalued her stock in the eyes of world.”

By June 2004, Moyers had joined the left-wing Center for American Progress as a senior fellow.

In 2004 as well, Moyers moved to Vermont to pursue personal interests such as the “adaptive reuse of historic buildings and loc.al civic activism.” Ever since then, he has earned his living as a landlord in a small Vermont town.

Although less actively involved in political work than he used to be, Moyers maintains a Twitter account in which he identifies himself as a “proud liberal” and displays an LGBTQ “Pride” flag icon. He commonly retweets messages from accounts that are especially critical of Republicans such as Donald Trump and Clarence Thomas, among others.

As avid a supporter of Democrat and leftist causes as his father, Moyers has made political contributions to such notable recipients as Patrick Leahy, Ralph Nader, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Donna Edwards, and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.

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