Daniel Schorr, a broadcast journalist whose career spanned more than 70 years and included memorable stints with CBS television and NPR radio, died July 23, 2010, at age 99. According to news reports, Schorr passed at a Washington, D.C., hospital following a brief illness.
A protégé of legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow at CBS News, Schorr first drew attention as a foreign correspondent. He opened the network’s Moscow bureau in 1955 and persuaded the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to grant his first television interview, with Face the Nation. After returning home for the holidays in late 1957, Schorr was denied readmission to the Soviet Union after repeatedly defying Soviet censors.
Nearly two decades later, Schorr landed on President Richard Nixon’s notorious “enemies list” — ranking at No. 17 — for his tough coverage of the administration during the Watergate years. Schorr won two Emmy Awards for his reporting of the scandal.
His CBS career ended in 1976 when he obtained a copy of a suppressed House of Representatives committee report on highly dubious activities by the CIA.
He showed a draft on television and discussed its contents, but when neither of CBS’s book subsidiaries was willing to publish the document, produced by the House Select Committee on Intelligence under Otis G. Pike, a New York Democrat, Schorr released it anonymously to the alternative newspaper The Village Voice.
When Schorr did not speak up after his colleague Lesley Stahl was suspected of giving the report to the Voice, he came under criticism from fellow journalists.
After Schorr subsequently admitted that he had leaked the document, there were threats requiring police protection and investigations by the FBI and Congress. When the House ethics committee demanded to know Schorr’s source, he refused to reveal it, risking a contempt citation. When questioned by the committee, he cited First Amendment protections in refusing to “betray a confidential source.” The committee voted 6 to 5 against a citation.
By that time CBS had suspended Schorr from reporting, and he ultimately resigned. Public perception improved when, in the aftermath of the incident, he was seen as a principled reporter defending a journalistic precept. For a time he became popular on the lecture circuit.
Following a brief tenure teaching journalism at University of California, Berkeley and writing a column for the Des Moines Register, he became the first employee at CNN when Ted Turner hired him as a senior news analyst in 1979.
That relationship ended over what Schorr considered an ethical conflict — CNN sought to partner Schorr with former Texas governor John Connally during coverage of the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, but Schorr felt it inappropriate to pair a journalist with a politician.
In 1985 he became a commentator at NPR, where he remained until his death.
Schorr was born August 31, 1916, in the Bronx. His Eastern European parents had emigrated from what is now Belarus. He developed an interest in journalism as an adolescent and contributed stories to New York news outlets while attending City College of New York.
After graduation he worked for The Jewish Daily Bulletin and then the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
After war broke out in Europe, Schorr went to work for Aneta, the news agency of the Netherlands East Indies. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. After completing his service, he returned to Aneta, in the Netherlands. He became fluent in Dutch.
In 1952 he accepted a job tryout with The New York Times, which resulted in an assignment to write about the plans for construction at Columbus Circle. While the paper considered a full-time job he returned to the Netherlands, where he wrote dispatches about a severe storm that impressed Murrow, who invited him to work for CBS radio. When the Times did not tender a job offer, he opted to go to CBS, thus beginning his broadcast career.
He is survived by his wife, a son, a daughter and a grandchild.
On May 22, 2001, Schorr had the distinction of being interviewed by the Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television. During the interview, conducted by Don Carleton, Schorr talked about his early years and education, where he began his career as a print journalist. He detailed his transition to radio, then television, working for CBS News in Moscow in the mid-1950s and Germany in the early 1960s. He discussed his work on the acclaimed nonfiction series CBS Reports and The Twentieth Century. Other topics covered in the interview include the Nixon administration and its Watergate scandal (where he found himself on the Nixon “enemies list”), the beginnings of CNN, and his commentaries for NPR.