Bill Moyers, a former White House press secretary to Lyndon B. Johnson who became the thoughtful voice of public television, has died. He was 91.

Former journalist, presidential spokesman and longtime PBS host Bill Moyers died Thursday at a Manhattan, N.Y., cancer center at age 91.

Born Billy Don Moyers in Hugo, Oklahoma, on June 5, 1934, the son of a dirt farmer and truck driver, Moyers dropped the "y" from his first name when he took his first journalism job as a cub reporter at 16 in Marshall, Texas.