Daniel Schorr’s career in journalism spans five continents
and more than six decades. He served CBS as a reporter for
Edward R. Murrow in postwar Europe, then in the United
States with Walter Cronkite during Watergate. In 2007, he
was a senior news analyst for National Public Radio.
Daniel Schorr was born August 31, 1916, in New York
City to parents fleeing pre-World War I persecution in
Telechan, a village in what is now Belarus. His father,
Louis, died when he was six—leaving a deathbed request
that the $2,000 life insurance policy be used to send Schorr
and his only sibling, polio-striken younger brother Alvin,
to college.
A top student at the Bronx Jewish Center and fluent in
Hebrew, Schorr became president of the Hebrew Society
during high school, and wrote for the DeWitt Clinton High
School newspaper. His exemplary grades earned him a
tuition-free scholarship to the College of the City of New
York, where he reported for CCNY’s The Campus. He
earned a B.S. degree in 1939. An accomplished tenor in
the synagogue choir, he contributed music articles to the
New York Times, the paper for which he aspired to work.
During World War II, he was drafted and served in Army
Intelligence.
Schorr reported for the short-lived Jewish Daily Bulletin,
then its parent company, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He
moved to the Hague to work for ANETA, the news agency
of the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). There, he
freelanced stories for Time, Newsweek, the New York Times,
the Christian Science Monitor, ABC, CBS and the London
Daily Mail. In 1950 Schorr was the inaugural winner of
the Netherlands’ journalism award named for the nation’s
founder: William the Orange.
Schorr’s first network radio broadcast was a live two minute broadcast over crackling shortwave for ABC’s
World News Roundup covering the May 1948 Congress of
Europe where Winston Churchill called for a new United
States of Europe to counter Soviet aggression. Schorr also
covered Indonesia’s independence from Holland, the abdication of Dutch Queen Wilhelmina (noted for her heroic
radio broadcasts from her exile in London during World
War II), and the launch of the North American Treaty
Organization (with inaugural NATO Supreme Commander
Dwight D. Eisenhower).
As a stringer for CBS, Schorr’s coverage of the dramatic
Holland flood that broke the dikes and killed more than
two thousand led to an offer from Edward R. Murrow. Still
desiring a post with the Times, Schorr contacted them about
the CBS offer but was rejected. In his autobiography, Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism (2001), Schorr wrote that
years later he was told that Times Managing Editor Turner
Catledge “ordered a freeze on the hiring of Jews as correspondents…concerned that the disproportionate representation of Jews on the staff might hamper Times coverage of
some future Middle East war.” Schorr covered the U.S. State
Department and related international events for CBS as part
of Murrow’s fabled team, which included Eric Sevareid,
Howard K. Smith, and David Schoenbrun. When the Soviet
Union admitted a handful of journalists in 1955, he was sent
to Moscow—along with the tools of the new television news
age: a Bell & Howell 16mm handheld camera and a windup Magnemite tape recorder. The Soviets tapped his phone
lines, limited his sources, and required a KGB review before
airing. Schorr and NBC’s Irving R. Levine kept lists of visiting friends from the West who smuggled out some film and
audiotape. His stories included a 1957 interview of Nikita
Khrushchev on CBS’ Face the Nation (filmed in Moscow),
the first-ever press tour of Siberia, the launch of Sputniks I
& II, and Khrushchev’s visits to Poland, the United States
and Paris. Because Schorr refused to cooperate with Soviet
censors, he was banned from returning to the USSR.
In 1959, connections in the Netherlands allowed Schorr
access to the famous Frank family hideaway at No. 263
Princes Canal, Amsterdam, as part of the CBS’ Nazi war
crime documentary Who Killed Anne Frank? For Murrow’s CBS Reports he produced an hour-long documentary, Poland–Country on a Tightrope, that included stark
footage of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. “I was not
prepared for what I would see,” Schorr said in his 2001
autobiography. “I had to read parts of my script several
times, trying to control a catch in my throat.”
Schorr also orchestrated exclusive interviews with
estranged Spanish cellist Pablo Casals and an 8-minute
interview with Fidel Castro regarding Cuba’s relations with
the U.S.S.R. that aired in its entirety on the CBS Evening
News. He also covered the hour-by-hour erection of a fence,
then a wall, between East and West Berlin beginning in
the fall of 1961. The harrowing reports included stories of
East German guards shooting would-be escapees, U.S. and
Soviet tanks facing off at Checkpoint Charlie, East Berliners escaping through tunnels, and President John F. Kennedy’s visit to West Berlin.
In 1966 Schorr covered President Lyndon B. Johnson’s
domestic programs, civil rights and the environment,
including the Peabody Award-winning documentary The
Poisoned Air. The FBI questioned friends and associates of
Schorr’s—and created a file—in the early 1970s when the
Richard M. Nixon White House was angered by his reporting. His coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings earned
him his three Emmys. During one live broadcast, Schorr
inadvertently read his name over the air as part of the infamous Nixon enemies list when handed a just-obtained copy
right before air time. Schorr was threatened with jail time
in 1976 by the House Ethics Committee after leaking an
exclusive copy of the U.S. House of Representatives’ secret
report on the CIA and FBI to the Village Voice. For failure to reveal his source, he faced contempt of Congress
charges, which later were dropped. However, the episode
created serious problems for Schorr at CBS. Chairman William S. Paley wanted him dismissed and after Schorr was
interviewed by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, he resigned
from CBS News in September, 1976. Schorr later wrote
about these events in Clearing the Air (1977).
On May 21, 1979, Schorr became the first employee of
Ted Turner’s fledgling Cable News Network as reporter and
senior news analyst. He covered the release hostages from
Iran and the elections of 1980 and 1984, but left CNN in
1985 in a dispute with Turner over limits to his editorial
freedom. Schorr narrated the 1994 miniseries Watergate
and made brief appearances as a newscaster in three motion
pictures: The Game, The Net, and The Siege.
Schorr is author of two memoirs. His honors include a
lifetime Peabody Award, the Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame, a Polk Radio Commentary Award,
and a duPont-Columbia Golden Baton. He and wife, Lisbeth, live in Washington. They have two children.
Further Reading
Boyer, Peter J. Who Killed CBS? The Undoing of America’s Number One News Network. New York: Random House. 1988.
Carter, Bill. “Daniel Schorr Wins Top duPont-Columbia Journalism Award.” New York Times, January 26, 1996, B17.
Schorr, Daniel. Clearing the Air. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1977.
——. Don’t Get Sick in America. Nashville, Aurora Publishers,
1970.
——. Introduction to Taking the Stand: The Testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North. New York: Pocket Books,
1987.
——. Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism. New York: Pocket
Books, 2001.
Kevin C. Lee