RIP to an American journalistic institution and legacy of a byegone era (haven't watched the Sunday retrospective, but on the DVR).
From the article:
Safer's piece from the Vietnamese hamlet of Cam Ne in August of 1965 showing U.S. Marines burning the villagers' thatched huts was cited by New York University as one of the 20th century's best pieces of American journalism. Some believe this report freed other journalists to stop censoring themselves and tell the raw truth about war.
He spent three tours (1964-'66) as head of the CBS Saigon bureau. His helicopter was shot down in a 1965 battle, after which Safer continued to report under fire.
Then in August 1975, with a new Sunday evening timeslot, Safer put 60 Minutes on the national stage. Interviewing Betty Ford, the first lady shocked many Americans by saying she would think it normal if her 18-year-old daughter were having sex. The historic sit-down also included frank talk about pot and abortion.
It was another Safer story that would become one of the program's most honored and important. "Lenell Geter's in Jail," about a young black man serving life for armed robbery in Texas, overturned Geter's conviction 10 days after the December 1983 segment exposed a sloppy rush to injustice. Safer and 60 Minutes were honored with the industry's highest accolades: the Peabody, George Polk and duPont-Columbia University awards. 60 Minutes founder Don Hewitt often pointed to the story as the program's finest work.
Some of these features had national impact, however, like his November 1991 report, "The French Paradox," which connected red wine consumption to lower incidents of heart disease among the free-eating French. Wine merchants say this report was single-handedly responsible for starting the red wine boom in America. His 1993 segment "Yes, But is it Art?" enraged the modern art community when it criticized expensive, contemporary installations featuring household items like toilets and vacuums.
He also had a special affinity for cars and did 60 Minutes segments on England's Rolls Royce and Italy's legendary Lamborghini. He owned a silver 1985 Ferrari convertible, which he had raced occasionally and also owned a Bentley when he lived in London, bought with his winnings from a card game.
In addition to the four duPonts, Safer won every major award, including the Paul White Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association in 1966 when he was only 35 -- an award usually given for lifetime achievement. The other awards given to Safer over his long career include three Peabody awards, three Overseas Press Club awards, two George Polk Memorial awards, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism first prize for domestic television, the Fred Friendly First Amendment award, 12 Emmys and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Government.
During this period he also filmed the historic CBS News Special Report "Morley Safer's Red China Diary" (August 1967), the first broadcast by a U.S. network news team from inside Communist China. Safer's Canadian citizenship helped get him into the country posing as a tourist interested in archeology. He and his cameraman, John Peters, were able to film the everyday lives of Chinese with a home movie camera. In a close call, suspicious authorities took Safer and Peters to meet an archeologist, who tested his knowledge. Safer knew enough about China's archeological periods to avoid arrest.
Safer was born Nov. 8, 1931 in Toronto and eventually became an American citizen, holding a dual citizenship. Telling MacLeans he felt "stateless," he believed this status was an advantage. "I bring a different perspective and I have no vested interests," he told the magazine in 1998.
He was chosen to produce "CBC News Magazine" in 1956, on which he also occasionally appeared . His first on-camera work was on assignment for the CBC covering the Suez Crisis in November 1956.
He was the only Western correspondent in East Berlin the night the Communists began building the Berlin Wall in August 1961.
