NEW YORK — CBS News producer Bernard Birnbaum, who helped shape the public’s view of issues ranging from poverty to the Watergate scandal while working alongside Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt, has died, the network said.
Birnbaum died on Thanksgiving Day at Stony Brook University Medical Center in Stony Brook, N.Y., CBS News said Saturday. He was 89.
Birnbaum’s CBS career won him seven Emmy Awards and took him to places ranging from Vietnam to the small-town America seen in “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.”
As a producer for “The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” and other programs, Birnbaum covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War and Watergate in depth.
His warm, candid demeanor made people feel comfortable talking to him, said his daughter Amy, also a CBS News producer.
“He could ask people anything” and forge enduring friendships out of interviews, she said.
Born in Brooklyn on Oct. 18, 1920, he began learning photography by working at a studio, she said. He served as a U.S. Army Air Corps combat cameraman during World War II and earned a film degree from New York University, CBS said.
A funeral is scheduled Tuesday in Larchmont, N.Y.
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