CBS News, NPR Veteran Daniel Schorr Dies
Veteran journalist Daniel Schorr, who worked with CBS News for two decades, died this morning after a short illness. He was 93.
Since 1985 Schorr has been a senior news analyst for National Public Radio, contributing commentary to "All Things Considered" and "Weekend Edition."
NPR's Scott Simon said, "I was privileged to know Dan Schorr for 25 years and cherish him as a fierce journalist, and a tender friend and father. We used to joke, 'I'm not Dan's son. But I play Dan's son on the radio.'
"Sharing the studio with him, and so many laughs and memories, has been the blessing of a lifetime," he said.
Photo Essay: Daniel Schorr (NPR)
In 1946, Schorr began his career as a foreign correspondent from Western Europe for the Christian Science Monitor and, later, The New York Times.
Schorr first caught the eye of famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow during his vivid reports on devastating flooding in the Netherlands in 1953. Murrow persuaded him to join the network, where he started out as its diplomatic correspondent in Washington.
For more than 20 years Schorr reported for CBS on such epoch-defining events as the launch of Sputnik, and as the network's Moscow bureau chief landed the first-ever TV interview with a Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev.
He traveled the globe covering assignments on the United Nations, Germany and Eastern Europe, while in Washington Schorr reported on civil rights, urban issues and Watergate.
CBS News' Howard Arenstein said that because Schorr was not afraid to report information the White House wanted buried, President Lyndon B. Johnson called Schorr an "S.O.B," while President Richard Nixon called on the FBI to watch him.
Schorr not only covered the news as CBS' chief Watergate correspondent (receiving three Emmy Awards in the process), but he also became part of the story. Hoping to beat the competition, he rushed to the air with Nixon's famous "enemies list" and began reading the list of 20.
As he got to No. 17, he discovered his own name.
"I remember that my first thought was that I must go on reading without any pause, or gasp or look of wild surmise," he wrote in his book "Clearing the Air."
"I do not know how well I carried off my effort to appear oblivious to the discovery of my name on an ominous-looking list, but I count this one of the most trying experiences in my television career."
Daniel Shore Interviewed by Howard Arenstein, 2002 | Download MP3
Schorr's stories pointing out weaknesses of the administration's programs so angered Nixon that he ordered an FBI investigation of the reporter - saying he was being considered for a top federal job. That investigation was later mentioned in one of the three articles of impeachment - "abuse of a federal agency" - adopted by the House Judiciary Committee against Nixon.
He said he figured he became such a thorn in Nixon's side because his newspaper background gave him a bluntness rare on television and an antagonism to the "stage-craft, image-making and slogan-selling" that Nixon favored.
Schorr became part of the story once again in 1976, when he arranged for the publication of an advance copy of a suppressed House Intelligence Committee report on illegal CIA and FBI findings.
At the time, Schorr called it "an inescapable decision of journalistic conscience" to see that the report ended up in print. To his surprise, reaction from his own colleagues in the media was negative, because Schorr had handed the report over in exchange for a donation to a group that aids journalists in First Amendment issues.
The idea of "selling any document is intolerable for a newsman whether it's for personal profit or for charity," Peter Lisagor, chief of the Chicago Daily News' Washington bureau, said at the time.
Many reporters also found Schorr's silence troubling when another CBS correspondent, Leslie Stahl, was wrongly accused of leaking the report.
Schorr was suspended by the network and the House opened an investigation of him, though it later dropped the case. He resigned from CBS soon after that.
"There was a ruckus, a big ruckus," Schorr had said of the dispute.
After CBS, Schorr taught journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and then in 1979 he joined Ted Turner's newly-created CNN as its senior correspondent in Washington.
Soon after leaving the cable station in 1985 over differences with Turner, Schorr began covering national politics for National Public Radio in the late '70s. He became senior news analyst for NPR in 1985.
Well into his 90s, he was still giving commentaries on NPR. Pondering the November 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, he cited the online contacts between the suspect, Maj. Nidal Hasan, and a radical cleric. He asked, "Does the Internet merit some of the responsibility for helping the violence-prone to fester there in communion with the machine?"
In addition to his three Emmys, Schorr received a Peabody Award and the duPont-Columbia Golden Baton, and was honored by civil liberties groups and professional organizations for his defense of the First Amendment. In 2002 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Arenstein said that Schorr earned his Peabody (for "uncompromising reporting of the highest integrity") because the veteran did not mince words or pull punches.
"How can you be a journalist if you want to have everybody love you all the time?" Schorr asked.
Born in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Schorr began his career in journalism while he was still in high school. When he wasn't working on the student newspaper, he spent his free time as a stringer for the Bronx Home News and the Jewish Daily Bulletin. During college, Schorr also worked part-time for several metropolitan dailies.
In 1977 Schorr published "Clearing the Air," an account of his experiences at CBS, and later a memoir, "Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism," in 2001.
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