NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

Safer, ‘60 Minutes’ fixture, dead at 84

NEW YORK

Viewers didn’t need to see Morley Safer’s reporting to feel its effects.

They could have almost heard the yowling from the Oval Office and the Pentagon after Safer’s 1965 expose of a U.S. military atrocity in Vietnam that played an early role in changing Americans’ view of the war.

Safer’s far-flung journalism got reactions and results during a 61-year career that found him equally at home reporting on social wrongs, the Orient Express, abstract art and the horrors of war.

That career came to an end this week, with a “60 Minutes” tribute Sunday and, then, with Safer’s death Thursday at age 84.

He is survived by his wife, the former Jane Fearer, and his daughter Sarah.

During his 46 years on “60 Minutes,” Safer did 919 stories, from his first in 1970 about U.S. Sky Marshals to his last this March, a profile of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels.

It was in 1970 that Safer joined “60 Minutes,” then just two years old and far from the national institution it would become. He claimed the co-host chair alongside a talk-show-host-turned-newsman named Mike Wallace.

During the next four decades, Safer’s rich tobacco-and-whiskey-cured voice delivered stories that ranged from art, music and popular culture, to “gotcha” investigations, to one of his favorite pieces, which, in 1983, resulted in the release from prison of Lenell Geter, the engineer wrongly convicted of a holdup at a fast-food restaurant and serving a life sentence.

His honors include three George Foster Peabody awards, 12 Emmys and two George Polk Memorial Awards.

In August 1965,“The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” aired a report by Safer that rocked viewers, who, at that point, remained mostly supportive of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.

What he encountered, and captured on film, was the spectacle of American soldiers employing their Zippo lighters to burn thatched-roof, mud-plastered huts to the ground, despite having met with no resistance from the village’s residents.

Safer’s expose ignited a firestorm, with President Lyndon Johnson giving CBS President Frank Stanton a tongue-lashing.

In 1970, he was brought to New York to succeed original co-host Harry Reasoner on an innovative newsmagazine that, in its third season, was still struggling in the ratings and would rely on Safer and Wallace as its only co-anchors for the next five years.

He quickly became a fixture at “60 Minutes” – and part of that show’s rough-and-tumble behind-the-scenes culture as the ratings took off.

Associated Press