Morley Safer

Morley Safer was born on November 8, 1931 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of a Jewish immigrant father who ran a shoe shop. He attended Harbord Collegiate Institute and Bloor Collegiate Institute in Toronto, and briefly attended the University of Western Ontario before he dropped out to become a newspaper reporter. He worked for various newspapers in Ontario and England, and later joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a correspondent and producer. He covered major stories in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, including the Suez Crisis and the Algerian War. In 1958, he moved to Britain and became the head of drama for ABC Weekend TV, where he produced popular and innovative series such as Armchair Theatre and The Avengers. In 1962, he was hired by CBS News as a London-based correspondent, and in 1965 he opened the CBS News bureau in Saigon, Vietnam. He became famous for his report on the Cam Ne village incident, where he showed American soldiers burning the huts of Vietnamese civilians. The report was widely seen as an anti-war statement and angered President Lyndon B. Johnson, who reportedly called CBS president Frank Stanton and said, "Your boys shat on the American flag yesterday." Safer later said that the report was "probably the most important story of my career." In 1967, he became the London bureau chief for CBS News, and in 1970 he joined the cast of 60 Minutes, a newsmagazine show that would become the most successful program in American television history. He stayed on the show for 46 years, until his retirement in 2016. He reported on a wide range of topics, from politics and culture to war and crime. He interviewed many famous and influential people, such as Jackie Kennedy, Betty Ford, Katharine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Anna Wintour, Ruth Madoff and many others. He was known for his curiosity, his wit and his elegant writing style. He won 12 Emmy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Emmy, three Overseas Press Awards, three Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, and the Paul White Award. He also wrote a best-selling memoir, Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam, in 1990. He donated his papers to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin in 2009. He was married to Jane Fearer, a writer and documentary filmmaker, from 1968 until his death. They had one daughter, Sarah, who is also a journalist. He died on May 19, 2016 in New York City, a week after announcing his retirement from 60 Minutes. He was 84 years old. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and respected journalists of his generation and a legend of CBS News.