(Daniel Schorr - one of the cornerstones of CBS News in the 1950's and 60's)
Most people listening to NPR the last twenty years have come to know the name Daniel Schorr as the commentator who gave sage advice and observations of an increasingly shrinking world. But if you grew up in the 1950's and 60's, Schorr was the correspondent who had first hand knowledge of the Cold War, was the first to do a live on-air interview with Nikita Khruschev and who ran afoul of Richard Nixon's White House during the Watergate era.
Schorr, like all the correspondents during that great age of reporting at CBS News, was the cool observer who reported and never spun, sought answers and shared a vast amount of knowledge. His was one of the many voices that came to be trusted in times of uncertainty.
And it was during the Cold War that Schorr had some of his greatest moments. In 1962, when tensions between the West and the Soviet Union were at their highest, Daniel Schorr reported on the newly constructed Berlin Wall, taking a crew to East Berlin in search of answers.
The result was the CBS Reports documentary Berlin: Wall of Shame, which aired on January 4, 1962. A vivid picture of just how bad relations had become between East and West.
It is doubtful we'll see or hear his kind again anytime soon. It is a tragedy that no heir apparent is on the horizon to take his place. More tragic that CBS News has become a lifeless shell of its former self. It is probably the time his words of calm and his keen observations are the most needed.
But all we can do at the moment is be reminded and perhaps strive.
RIP - Daniel Schorr.
