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September 19, 2005

Daniel Schorr, NPR commentator and former CBS correspondent, to speak at The Fletcher School at Tufts University - Tuesday, September 20 at 5 p.m.

Medford, Somerville, MA – Daniel Schorr – the senior news analyst/commentator at National Public Radio, one of the last remaining members of Edward R. Murrow's famed team of correspondents known as Murrow’s Boys, and the CBS correspondent who made President Nixon’s infamous "Enemies' List" during Watergate -- will speak at The Fletcher School at Tufts University on Tuesday, Sept. 20, beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Now a robust 89 years old, Schorr’s talk, entitled “Forgive Us Our Press Passes,” is jointly sponsored by the Murrow Center and the Charles Francis Adams’ Lecture Series. Schorr is expected to touch upon the various aspects of the media’s coverage of major events –First Amendment rights of the press [Judith Miller case], the media’s war coverage in Iraq, and how reporting has taken a wrong turn since the days of Edward R. Murrow.

Schorr’s 20-year career as a foreign correspondent began in 1946. Having served in US Army intelligence during World War II, he began writing from Western Europe for the Christian Science Monitor and later The New York Times, witnessing postwar reconstruction, the Marshall Plan, and the creation of the NATO alliance. In 1953, he came to Edward R. Murrow’s attention and was hired as CBS News diplomatic correspondent and later Bureau Chief for Germany and Eastern Europe where for over a decade he covered all major world events such as the Berlin Crisis, and interviewed major world leaders including Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev’s first exclusive TV interview.

Reassigned to Washington in 1966, Schorr hung up his foreign correspondent’s trench coat and settled down to “become re-Americanized,” as he puts it, by plunging into coverage of civil rights, urban and environmental problems, eventually becoming CBS News Chief Watergate correspondent where he found himself as part of his own story when the Watergate hearings turned up a Nixon “enemies list” with his name on it.

In 1979, Schorr was asked by Ted Turner to help create the Cable News Network, serving in Washington as its senior correspondent until 1985, when he left in a dispute over an effort to limit his editorial independence.

Since then, Schorr has worked primarily for NPR, contributing regularly to “All Things Considered,” “Weekend Edition Saturday” and “Weekend Edition Sunday,” and participating in live coverage of important news events.

For more information, contact: Terry Ann Knopf at (617) 627-2778 or terry.knopf@tufts.edu

Posted by jessica at September 19, 2005 04:09 PM