Bernard Shaw, the venerable TV news anchor who helped turn CNN into a powerhouse, has died. He was 82.
Shaw died Wednesday from pneumonia not related to COVID-19, his family said.
Based in Washington D.C. when CNN launched, Shaw, known as Bernie to friends and colleagues, was the cable news channel’s lead anchor for two decades until his retirement in 2001.
During his tenure, Shaw anchored major breaking news events, like the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981, the Tiananmen Square student revolt in 1988, and every presidential election.
But it was his coverage of the Gulf War in 1991 that helped transform CNN’s fortunes, establishing the news channel as a news juggernaut. Shaw reported from Baghdad during the war, the first conflict which was broadcast live for the world to see.
“The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated, we are seeing bright flashes going off all around the sky,” Shaw reported during the U.S. air campaign.
“The Walls were shaking, the windows were vibrating, the concussions were blowing us against the wall,” he recalled in a retrospective interview for CNN.
While newspapers were providing updates on the war the day after the events happened, and broadcast programs like the evening news broadcasts provided daily updates, CNN’s coverage, led by Shaw, showed the grim reality of war in real-time, and cemented CNN’s status as a dominant player in global news.
But Shaw was also a savvy political journalist, anchoring the channel’s political talk show from 1992 until his retirement. Shaw served as a debate moderator in both the 2000 vice presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman, and in a 1988 presidential debate between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, where a question posed to Dukakis about the death penalty caused an uproar and became one of the most memorable debate moments in history.
Shaw continued to appear on CNN after his retirement for occasional appearances about the channel’s history, and important moments that he covered as a journalist.
Bernard Shaw was born May 22, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois to Edgar Shaw, a railroad employee, and Camilla Shaw, a housekeeper. Shaw served in the U.S. Marine Corps. from 1959-1963, and received his B.A. from the University of Illinois in 1966.
Shaw’s journalism career began as a local reporter in Chicago, before joining the CBS News D.C. bureau in 1971. He left CBS for ABC News in 1977, becoming the network’s Latin America correspondent, and moved to CNN for its launch in 1980.
A trailblazing Black journalist, Shaw was inducted into the NABJ hall of fame in 2014.
“Bernie was a CNN original and was our Washington Anchor when we launched on June 1st, 1980. 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,” CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht said in a statement. “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.”
Shaw is survived by his wife of 28 years, Linda Allston, and their children.
Source: Hollywood
