Roger Mudd, a legendary CBS News political reporter, has died at the age of 93

Roger Mudd, the CBS journalist whose political reporter replaced “The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” turned him into a familiar and respected face of tens of millions of Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, died Tuesday of kidney failure complications at home in McLean, Virginia. He was 93 years old.

“Roger was a hero in the CBS News Washington office,” said Susan Zirinsky, president and senior executive producer of CBS News. “He was a journalist of enormous integrity and character. He would not move if he thought he was right and would not compromise his ethical standards. He was an inspiration to all members of the office. On a personal note, I sat down. directly to the DC newsroom: Roger was great, not only in his physical presence, but he was bigger than life. “

Mudd joined CBS News as a congressional correspondent in 1961 and was appointed national affairs correspondent in 1977.

On November 4, 1979, he had perhaps his biggest political interview and one of the most famous in presidential politics when he anchored and reported on “CBS REPORTS: Teddy,” a one-hour look at Senator Edward M. Kennedy, candidate for the Democratic presidency.

Mudd, with his concise style of interviewing, posed a very basic question for which Kennedy was surprised without preparing: “Senator, why do you want to be president?” Kennedy walked awkwardly in a public moment of weakness that stopped his political momentum: he would lose the Democratic candidacy to Jimmy Carter.

In another singular moment with a Kennedy, Mudd was covering Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign and was one of the last to interview him at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, minutes before Kennedy was assassinated. June 5, 1968.

Mudd was involved in other significant CBS REPORTS documentaries, none larger than the award-winning Peabody “The Selling of the Pentagon,” a 1971 investigation that exposed the U.S. military’s use of tax-funded public relations by burn his image and sell the Vietnam War. . The biting informant infuriated army friends in Congress, who held hearings and cited unpublished footage from the documentary.

This led to CBS President Frank Stanton’s televised appearance before Congress. He refused to produce the catches, comparing them to the printing of sacrosanct reporters’ notebooks. Stanton won a significant victory for press freedom when the chamber voted not to arrest him.

The Washington Bureau of CBS News of the 1960s and 1970s was full of big names. Seventy-five percent of American TVs in use tuned in to the network’s three newscasts each night, where tens of millions watched Eric Sevareid, Daniel Schorr, Marvin and Bernard Kalb, George Herman, Bob Schieffer, Lesley Stahl, Ed Bradley and Robert Pierpoint.

But none was bigger than Mudd. He had denounced and co-anchored political conventions, elections, and eventually earned his place as Walter Cronkite’s regular replacement.

He cut his teeth at the stories of the early 1960s In the spring of 1964, Mudd issued 67-day reports on the Senate debate on civil rights law. In those days, journalists were paid a salary, plus fees for each time they appeared on the air. He later explained that his salary went from $ 400 a week to $ 2,500.

Mudd soon began to headline his own broadcasts. He anchored “The CBS Evening News with Roger Mudd” on Saturdays from February 1966 to July 1973 and on Sundays from January 1970 to September 1971. All the while, he continued to report on Congress and politics and was known as one of the “principals” of Cronkite Knights.

Other major events he anchored or reported included Emmy-winning triple coverage of the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew; Emmy-winning coverage of George Wallace’s filming; Memphis after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr .; and President Richard Nixon’s resignation speech. Mudd had co-anchored Nixon’s inaugural cover with Cronkite in 1969.

Mudd also reported on CBS News Specials, including “Busing” and “The Issue of Busing” in the spring of 1972 and “New Voices in the South,” in 1971. He helped explain how Congress works to young people, anchoring. ” What is the whole Congress about in 1974 and what is the Senate about in 1975.

In 1981, Mudd was considered the favorite to replace Cronkite. But Dan Rather, a friend and rival of Mudd, got the job. Mudd left for NBC News, where his former boss, former head of the Washington Office of CBS News and then-president of NBC News, Bill Small, teamed up with Tom Brokaw to co-anchor “NBC Nightly News “.

He left NBC in 1987 for the PBS show “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour,” where he served as a commentator and political reporter. In 1992 he began teaching at Princeton and Washington and Lee universities while working for The History Channel, from which he retired in 2004 after 10 years as a major host on air.

In 2008, Mudd published his memoirs, “The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News” (Public Affairs). In a publicity interview with the Huffington Post, he was quoted as saying, “I’m a CBS man, no matter how many times I’ve heard myself say, ‘Roger Mudd, NBC News.’

Roger Harrison Mudd was born on February 9, 1928 in Washington, DC. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and Lee in 1950 and her master’s degree in American history from the University of North Carolina in 1951. It was predetermined by his 54-year-old wife, Emma Jeanne Spears Mudd, with who had four children. , who all survive him: Daniel, Mary Mudd-Ruth, Jonathan and Matthew. He is also survived by 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.