Check it Out!: Great Reporters on What It Takes to Tell the Story

Contributors

Contributors g Ed Bradley In 2000, Ed Bradley celebrated his nineteenth season as co-editor of and correspondent for 60 Minutes. His more notable reports for 60 Minutes have included “Big Man, Big Voice,” the uplifting story of a German singer who became successful despite birth defects; a report on the cruel effects of nuclear testing on the town of Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan; and “Schizophrenia,” a report on that misunderstood brain disorder. Bradley also reports for primetime specials. “Unsafe Haven” for 60 Minutes II made headlines by exposing unsafe training methods and poorly trained workers inside the nation’s largest chain of psychiatric hospitals . “Town under Siege,” a report about a small town battling the oil industry over toxic waste, was hailed as one of the ten best television programs of 1997 by Time magazine. He covered presidential campaigns and national conventions from 1976 through 1996 for CBS. Before joining 60 Minutes Bradley was principal correspondent for CBS Reports, a CBS News White House correspondent, anchor of the CBS Sunday Night News, and anchor of that network’s Street Stories. He joined CBS News as a stringer in its Paris bureau in 1971 and was transferred to the Saigon bureau a year later. He was named CBS News correspondent in 1973 and, shortly thereafter, was wounded on assignment in Cambodia. He was assigned to the CBS Washington bureau in 1974 and volunteered in 1975 to return to Indochina, where he covered the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam. Prior to joining CBS News, Bradley was a reporter for WCBS Radio in New York. He had previously been a reporter for WDAS Radio in Philadelphia. Bradley has been awarded eleven Emmys, the Overseas Press Club Award, and the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Silver Baton, among others. Bradley’s coverage of the plight of Cambodian refugees, broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and CBS News Sunday Morning, won a George Polk Award in journalism. 174 g check it out! Tom Brokaw Tom Brokaw is the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, a contributing editor to Dateline NBC, and a program anchor for MSNBC. Equally at ease covering news events from the world’s capitals or from small-town America, he has an impressive list of “firsts” to his credit. He conducted the first exclusive one-on-one interview in the United States with Mikhail Gorbachev, for which he won an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award. He was the only anchor to report from the scene the night the Berlin Wall fell. He was the first American anchor to report on the human rights abuses in Tibet and to interview the Dalai Lama. Brokaw was also the first to report from the site of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the TWA Flight 800 tragedy in 1996. He was the anchor who found and interviewed Charlie Trie and Johnny Chung, key figures in the 1997 campaign finance abuse scandal. He was the first network anchor to travel to Albania during the NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia. He conducted the first U.S. television interview with the newly installed Russian president Vladimir Putin. He also served as master of ceremonies for the opening of the National D-Day Museum on the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Normandy invasion. His work before Nightly News included the Brokaw Report (1992–1993) and Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric (1993–1994). Among his many awards were an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award for the documentary special “Why Can’t We Live Together,” examining racial separation in America’s suburbs; a Peabody Award for “To Be an American”; and an Emmy for his “China in Crisis” special. Brokaw was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable TV Hall of Fame in 1997 and received a Congressional Medal of Honor in 1999. Complementing his distinguished broadcast journalism career, Brokaw has written articles, essays, and commentary for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and others. He published his first book in 1998, entitled The Greatest Generation. A bestseller , the book follows the generation of Americans born in the 1920s who came of age during the Great Depression, fought in World War II, and went on to build America. His second book, The Greatest Generation Speaks, was published in 1999. Brokaw has received numerous honorary degrees, from Notre Dame, contributors g 175 Duke...