Bernard Shaw obit

Bernard Shaw, longtime CNN anchor, has died at 82

 

He was not on the list.

Bernard Shaw, the CNN anchor who was a mainstay for the network for more than 20 years, died Wednesday at age 82. In a statement, his family announced that Shaw died of pneumonia unrelated to COVID-19.

Shaw was with CNN when it launched in 1980, and served as its first chief anchor. He retired in 2001.

Shaw was born May 22, 1940, and grew up in Chicago, and attended the University of Illinois at Chicago before joining the Marines. Even then, he knew that he wanted to pursue journalism. He began his reporting career in his hometown, and went on to work for CBS News and ABC News, reporting from Congress, the White House and Latin America.

During the years that many viewers began turning to CNN to watch breaking news unfold, it was often Shaw whom they saw on screen: after the 1981 assassination attempt against then-President Ronald Reagan, during the massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, live from his hotel room in Baghdad during the First Gulf War in 1991, and during the contentious 2000 presidential election.

In a 2014 interview with NPR's Tell Me More, Shaw spoke about his famously cool head during crises.

"One of the things I strove for," he told host Michele Martin, "was to be able to control my emotions in the midst of hell breaking out. And I personally feel that I passed my stringent test for that in Baghdad. The more intense the news story I cover, the cooler I want to be. The more I ratchet down my emotions, even the tone of voice because people are depending on you for accuracy, dispassionate descriptions of what's happening. And it would be a disservice to the consumers of news — be they readers, listeners or viewers — for me to become emotional and to get carried away."

Shaw began his broadcasting career as an anchor and reporter for WNUS in Chicago in 1964. He then worked as a reporter for the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company in Chicago, moving later to Washington as the White House correspondent. He worked as a correspondent in the Washington Bureau of CBS News from 1971 to 1977. In 1977, he moved to ABC News as Latin American correspondent and bureau chief before becoming the Capitol Hill Senior Correspondent.

Shaw left ABC in 1980 to move to CNN as co-anchor of its PrimeNews broadcast, anchoring from Washington, D.C.[4] Shaw's coverage of the 1981 assassination attempt on U.S. president Ronald Reagan (with Shaw joined by former CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr, one of the first on-air personalities hired by the fledgling cable channel) is credited as helping to establish CNN as a credible and reliable broadcast news source at an early point in the network's history.

Shaw was widely known for the question he posed to Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Michael Dukakis at his second Presidential debate with George H. W. Bush during the 1988 election, which Shaw was moderating. Knowing that Dukakis opposed the death penalty, Shaw asked him if he would support an irrevocable death penalty for a man who hypothetically raped and murdered Dukakis's wife. Dukakis responded that he would not; critics felt he framed his response too legalistically and logically, and did not address it sufficiently on a personal level. Kitty Dukakis, among other public figures, found the question inflammatory and unwarranted at a presidential debate. Several journalists also on the panel with Shaw, including Ann Compton, Andrea Mitchell, and Margaret Garrard Warner, expressed an interest in leaving Dukakis's name out of the question.

He is also remembered for his reporting on the 1991 Gulf War. Reporting with CNN correspondents John Holliman and Peter Arnett from the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, he found shelter under a desk as he reported cruise missiles flying past his window. He also made frequent trips back and forth from the hotel's bomb shelter. While describing the situation in Baghdad, he famously stated "Clearly I've never been there, but this feels like we're in the center of hell."

Shaw moderated the October 2000 vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman.

Shaw co-anchored CNN's Inside Politics from 1992 until he retired from CNN in 2001. He occasionally appeared on CNN, including in May 2005, when a plane flew into restricted air space in Washington, D.C. He also co-anchored Judy Woodruff's last broadcast on CNN in June 2005. Shaw noted that after 41 years in the business, given what he missed in his personal life, the cost was not worth it. Shaw appeared on the June 1, 2020, episode of CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront to recognize the 40th anniversary of the start of the network.

Accolades

1994: Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.

1996: Paul White Award, Radio Television Digital News Association

Bernard Shaw was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2002 in the area of Communications