Yahoo News Bernard Shaw Dies: First Chief Anchor At CNN’s Launch Was 82
Bernard Shaw, the first chief anchor for CNN who helped lead breaking news coverage for more than 20 years, has died. He was 82.
Shaw died Wednesday of pneumonia unrelated to Covid-19, his family announced in a statement to the network.
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From CNN’s launch on June 1, 1980, Shaw delivered to viewers breaking news in a warm voice and matter-of-fact style, helping the upstart 24-hour news network gain stature against its broadcast rivals. That was evident when he anchored coverage of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, a breaking news event that established CNN as a reliable outlet to turn to in the midst of national moments of crisis.
By 1988, Shaw moderated a presidential debate, but drew some controversy when he posed a hypothetical question to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis that referred to the rape and murder of his wife. The point of the question was to elicit Dukakis’ views on the death penalty, and it may have hurt the candidate as he had no emotional reaction to the hypothetical scenario and instead delivered a straightforward response.
At the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, when the network provided groundbreaking coverage of the conflict, Shaw was in Baghdad as he reported on the U.S.-led allied forces attack on the city. CNN beat its broadcast competition in reporting on the outbreak of the war.
As the events were unfolding, Shaw was in his hotel room, reporting by phone that “the skies over Baghdad have been illuminated. We’re seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky.” For more than 12 hours, he and Peter Arnett and John Holliman reported from the scene. After they eventually left the country for Jordan, Shaw returned to the air and said, “A couple of times I thought to myself, ‘If you’re going to die, die doing what you love to do.'”
“There was one blast that was very close, less than a block away from the hotel. I hit the floor,” Shaw later told The Washington Post.
He, Arnett and Holliman were widely recognized for their ability to be cool under fire and their real-time reporting on the unfolding events further established CNN as an international news brand. The network’s founder, Ted Turner, was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year later that year.
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Shaw also reported on the uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989, as well as presidential elections in the ’80s and ’90s. He retired from the network in 2001.
Shaw was one of the few African American anchors with a national presence at the time, but he later told NPR that didn’t affect the way that he reported and anchored coverage. “What I strove for was perfection, which was impossible to achieve,” he said.
Chris Licht, the chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, said in a statement, “He was our lead anchor for the next twenty years from anchoring coverage of presidential elections to his iconic coverage of the First Gulf War live from Baghdad in 1991. Even after he left CNN, Bernie remained a close member of our CNN family providing our viewers with context about historic events as recently as last year. The condolences of all of us at CNN go out to his wife Linda and his children.”
According to the network, funeral services will be closed to family and invited guests, with plans for a public memorial at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting that donations be made to the Bernard Shaw Scholarship Fund at the University of Chicago.
Reflecting on his career in an interview with NPR in 2014, Shaw said, “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.”
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