On Wednesday, a domestic worker’s son from the South Side of Chicago will step down from his job as the most famous newsman in the world.
That description of CNN news anchor Bernard Shaw may be hyperbolic, but not by much. Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings are august celebrities, but their audiences are measured in the mere millions, and mostly North American millions at that.
Via satellite and cable systems extending over the entire planet, Shaw and his CNN colleagues can pop up almost anywhere. With his legendary on-the-spot reporting from the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in the opening salvos of the Persian Gulf War, Shaw’s worldwide audience reportedly exceeded 1 billion.
“Bernie Shaw is probably the most recognizable newsman in the world,” said Bruce DuMont, founder and president of Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications. “You can take a network anchorman like Dan Rather and he could walk into any city in America and people would know who he is. But if you take him around the world and set him in Calcutta, people wouldn’t recognize him. Given the reach of CNN, you would give Bernie the distinction of the most-watched anchorman in television history.”
An African-American kid who dreamed of becoming a network TV correspondent when his playground pals yearned for athletic stardom, Shaw achieved his goal only one year behind schedule — at age 31. But it took perseverance — and pestering a visiting Walter Cronkite with 34 phone messages when Shaw was a Marine stationed in Hawaii and anxious for a start in broadcasting.
A log of his 37-year career serves as a chart of the major events of the last third of the 20th Century — from the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and Watergate to the end of the Cold War and the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
As lead anchor for CNN ever since the network was created 20 years ago, Shaw helped lead a revolution in broadcast journalism that transformed the industry — and changed the way most Americans get their news.
“It guaranteed news on demand, and live coverage of breaking stories,” Shaw said. “That’s our strong suit, our reason for existence. Nobody does it better.”
Tom Hannon, who has worked with Shaw as CNN’s senior Washington producer and political director since 1981, said Shaw’s presence and journalistic performance served to define the cable network from the beginning.
“When we started, Bernie was CNN,” Hannon said. “He is the public face of the network. He brought a unique journalistic understanding of events and the highest standard of ethics and professionalism. And Bernie’s a true gentleman. It’s hard to imagine this place without Bernie.”
Shaw has not been above criticism. His pointed question to Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential debate — asking if Dukakis would still oppose the death penalty if his wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered — caused a furor. Though Shaw thought it only hard-hitting, to-the-point journalism, Mrs. Dukakis denounced it as “outrageous.”
CNN has also been criticized for being superficial, producing too much headline and not enough depth and analysis. Over the last two years, it has been challenged in the ratings by newer cable news operations such as Fox and MSNBC, as well as facing layoffs and a corporate reorganization. CNN’s coverage of the Bush-Gore presidential election, which Shaw helped anchor, was widely regarded as tepid, at best.
But Shaw sees the CNN format as the secret of its success. He finds a different fault with the cable network.
“What I don’t like is that we changed the economics of television news, and in the process, some awfully good people are still on the street because those bastards at the other networks put on their green eyeshades and started cutting back,” Shaw said. “The other networks added up the number of reports CNN filed each day, and they began to say, `How is it our news budget is nearly three times what CNN’s is, yet they’re on the air 24 hours a day pumping out more?'”
CNN has also been cutting back on its payroll, but Shaw notes it’s keeping its 12 domestic bureaus and expanding its overseas operation from 27 to 29 bureaus. He insists the cutbacks have nothing to do with his decision to retire.
“I’m not leaving because I have any animus toward anyone,” he said. “It is time for me to go. I’ve got to get this book written and there are a couple of other books I want to do. And it’s time for me to be with my best friend, [wife] Linda . . . the news has dominated my family life — my wife; my son, Amar; my daughter, Anil, have made too many sacrifices.”
Hannon said he doubted that the personnel cutbacks and decline in cable news ratings had anything to do with Shaw’s departure.
“With Bernie, what you see is what you get,” Hannon said. “I’m sure it was his choice now to smell the roses.”
Now nearing 61, Shaw will continue to do special projects for CNN. He’s stepping down as news anchor to devote his time to writing his autobiography and other books.
Shaw’s lifelong infatuation with the news had early roots, in a childhood home at 6329 S. Harper Ave., where newspapers were a fixture. His father, Edgar, a railroad worker at the nearby New York Central Railroad roundhouse, took all four of the major daily Chicago newspapers, plus the then-weekly Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier.
“I began reading at an early age,” Shaw said. “I can to this day remember the Sun-Times headline that said, `FDR Dies.'”
Former Chicagoan and longtime CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante, who worked with Shaw when both were in the network’s Washington bureau in the 1970s, said Shaw’s roots in Chicago journalism were a factor in his success.
“He’s always had that `get it right’ requirement that [ABC’s] Frank Reynolds made famous [in coverage of the 1981 Reagan shooting],” Plante said. “He was not a quota hire. He is a good journalist.”
Shaw played on the Dunbar High School baseball team and worked as an unpaid lifeguard at Washington Park. He made weekly trips to the Museum of Science and Industry and monthly ones to the Art Institute. He didn’t do well in math, but excelled at English, social studies, science and geography. He was student council president at Dunbarand later, president of the citywide organization of student council presidents.
At around age 13, he took note of a “guy on TV named Edward R. Murrow,” and later, Walter Cronkite, deciding he wanted to be just like them.
But his father was a laborer and his mother, Camilla, a domestic who scrubbed floors in houses in Palos Park and Blue Island. In addition to the three boys, there was a sister, Rose Lee. Instead of going to college, he joined the Marine Corps.
Assigned to the ground crew of an aviation squadron, Shaw was in Hawaii in 1961 when he read in the local paper that Walter Cronkite was visiting to film a segment of one of his “20th Century” shows.
“I called the hotel 34 times, leaving messages,” Shaw said. “I did that for three days and finally there was a message at work saying, `Walter Cronkite returned your call.”
The CBS anchor agreed to meet with Shaw, and did so, though plane delays made him 2 1/2 hours late.
“I had thought he was going to stiff me,” Shaw said. “I asked him what was the most important thing I could do [to prepare for a journalism career] and he leaned over in his chair and said, `Read, read, read.'”
After leaving the Marine Corps in 1963, Shaw enrolled at the University of Illinois’ old Navy Pier branch, carrying a 14-hour class load while working at a variety of odd jobs to pay expenses. In 1964, he was hired by WYNR for $100 a week to cover Martin Luther King’s crusade in Chicago, and ended up working a 4-to-midnight news shift while going to school full time.
“I had like two nervous breakdowns carrying the load,” he said.
He almost got into a fight with a Tribune reporter who insisted that Shaw’s crowd estimates for a King rally at Soldier Field were inflated. When news of the Richard Speck murders broke, Shaw, then working for WIND, was at a late-night hangout in Hyde Park.
“I drove from the parking lot up the Outer Drive to the Wrigley Building in 14 minutes,” he said. “I didn’t stop for any lights.”
He was one of the first reporters to get to Memphis after King’s assassination, and in the thick of the riots that attended the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
WIND’s parent company, Westinghouse, transferred him to its Group W Washington bureau later that year. He had to drop out of the University of Illinois, and was terribly homesick for Chicago, but there were compensations. In 1971, after covering Capitol Hill and the White House, he got the call he had been waiting for since he was 13. Bill Small, CBS Washington bureau chief, asked him to come by and talk about a job.
Shaw worked the Watergate story, scoring an exclusive interview with John Mitchell, after catching him trying to sneak into the back door of the White House, and other major events of that tumultuous time. But he was frustrated because he also had wanted to become a foreign correspondent, specializing in Latin America, and that beat at CBS was already taken by some first-rate reporters.
ABC news chief Roone Arledge came by headhunting in 1977, and offered Shaw the post of ABC bureau chief in Latin America.
Shaw became unhappy with ABC after Washington bureau chief George Watson was abruptly dismissed and replaced by celebrity journalist Carl Bernstein. When Watson turned up at CNN, which was not yet on the air, and network boss Ted Turner asked Shaw to become the main news anchor in 1980, he found himself in a dilemma.
“It was an awful time to be changing jobs,” he said. “We had 21 percent inflation. Interest rates were 20 percent. I didn’t want to jeopardize my family . . . going to work for a network that didn’t even exist. I paced the dining room floor for about three weeks.
“Finally, Linda said, `I think you should take the job with CNN because, if they take off, and you’re not aboard, I won’t be able to live with you.”
He did and the rest is broadcast history.
The Shaws plan to remain in their comfortable house in the Maryland suburbs, where Shaw is growing tree peonies. But he itches to spend more time back in Chicago, where he still has relatives and friends from school days.
One enterprise he intends to continue is the $300,000 Shaw Endowment Fund he established at the University of Illinois to provide financial aid to male and female students who, like him, are deserving high achievers dragged down by having to work long hours to make enough money to get by.
“If he had to pick a time to go, this is the time,” CBS’ Plante said. “Coming off all the news of the Clinton years. It’ll be quieter now, at least for a while. Of course, it never stays quiet for long.”
BEING THERE
1940-1959: Bernard Shaw born in Chicago. Attends Carter Elementary School and Dunbar High School.
1959-1963: Serves with U.S. Marine Corps.
1964-1968: Attends University of Illinois, Chicago, and works for WYNR (later WNUS) and WIND Radio. During this time he covers:
– Martin Luther King fair housing demonstrations.
– Richard Speck murder case.
– Benjamin Willis school controversies.
– Martin Luther King murder in Memphis.
– Democratic National Convention.
1968-1971: Transfers to Group W bureau, Washington, becomes White House correspondent and covers:
– Last days of Johnson administration.
– Nixon administration.
1971-1977: Realizes dream of becoming a CBS network reporter and covers:
– Watergate.
1977-1980: Joins ABC News and later becomes Latin American bureau chief and covers:
– Capitol Hill economic stories.
– Iranian hostage crisis.
– El Salvador civil war.
– Sandinista revolt and overthrow of Somoza regime in Nicaragua.
1980-2000: Joins CNN cable network as anchor and correspondent and covers:
– Shooting of President Reagan.
– Bombing of U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut.
– Explosion of space shuttle Challenger.
– Iran-Contra hearings, Reagan-Gorbachev summit.
– Second 1988 presidential debate (as moderator).
– Tiananmen Square uprising in China.
– The release of Nelson Mandella from prison, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
– Persian Gulf War, reports from Baghdad during initial bombing.
– Oklahoma City bombing.
– Transfer of Hong Kong from Britain to China.
– Princess Diana’s death.
– Impeachment of President Clinton.
– 2000 vice presidential debate (as moderator).
