Longtime journalist Daniel Schorr, 93, dies

WASHINGTON – Daniel Schorr, whose journalism career over more than six decades landed him in the dark corners of Europe during the Cold War and the shadows of President Richard Nixon’s notorious “enemies list” in the 1970s, has died. He was 93.

Schorr died Friday at Washington’s Georgetown University Hospital after a brief illness, said his son, Jonathan Schorr.

Daniel Schorr’s path through the news business began in print, then led to almost three decades in television with CBS News and the fledgling cable network CNN.

By the time of his death, he was best known as a …

WASHINGTON – Daniel Schorr, whose journalism career over more than six decades landed him in the dark corners of Europe during the Cold War and the shadows of President Richard Nixon’s notorious “enemies list” in the 1970s, has died. He was 93.

Schorr died Friday at Washington’s Georgetown University Hospital after a brief illness, said his son, Jonathan Schorr.

Daniel Schorr’s path through the news business began in print, then led to almost three decades in television with CBS News and the fledgling cable network CNN.

By the time of his death, he was best known as a longtime senior news analyst and liberal commentator on National Public Radio.

Bill Moyers, who like Schorr had stints at CBS News and in public broadcasting, said Schorr was a model of integrity.

“At NPR, he exemplified the very best of public broadcasting by refusing to be intimidated by either official funders or partisan thugs who besieged the brass in protest of his honest reporting,” Moyers wrote Friday in an e-mail.

CBS “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer said if not for Schorr, he doesn’t know what reporters would have done to get stories about Watergate. “When Watergate came along, he kept us in the game,” Schieffer said.

Schorr covered the news as CBS’ chief Watergate correspondent. Hoping to beat the competition, he rushed to the air with Nixon’s famous “enemies list” and began reading the list of 20 to viewers before previewing it. As he got to No. 17, he discovered his name.

“I remember that my first thought was that I must go on reading without any pause, or gasp or look of wild surmise,” he wrote in his book “Clearing the Air.”