Daniel Schorr is one of the oldest journalists alive. Born on August 31, 1916, Daniel Louis Schorr is still an active journalist and has a lot more to his name than merely his age, which has spanned well into the tenth decade. Among his achievements are three Emmys; correspondence work in the Soviet Union and arranging an exclusive meeting with the head of USSR; documentary work and filming a documentary called "The Land beyond the Wall: Three Weeks in a German City"; and many other things.
Schorr was born in Bronx, New York, in a Jewish family. He supposedly started his reporting career when he called the police and Bronx Home News shortly after a woman had fallen off the roof of Daniel's apartment building. He joined
CBS News in 1953 and stayed there for a whopping 23 years until he was forced to resign after highly controversial reports on the CIA and FBI. He married Lisbeth Bamberger in 1967 and they had 2 children. Schorr is thought to be one of the "Murrow's Boys", journalists closely associated with the late Edward R. Murrow during his years in
CBS; Daniel was one of the first journalists that Murrow hired. He was chosen by Murrow for his vivid Netherlands's flood coverage in 1953.
He wasn't exactly in the best terms with the White House. Before he started attracting the Nixon Administration's anger in 1971, he had incorrectly reported that president candidate Barry Goldwater was a well known person among the German right-wing activists and had recently traveled to Germany to visit Hitler's bunker in Berchtesgaden.
CBS had to issue an apology, and were not too happy about Schorr's performance at the time, for obvious reasons. His later work included working on the Watergate scandal, and being one of the journalists who actually started it. He was also one of the 20 people on the infamous Nixon's enemies list; he was numbered the 17th on the list. He received three subsequent Emmys in 1971, 1972 and 1973 for his outstanding journalistic work.
Schorr was forced to resign from
CBS for being unable to prove the highly controversial materials that he came up with in 1976. He came up with a secret report on illegal CIA and FBI activities; he then refused to reveal who gave them to him. The court nearly imprisoned him for this. In the later years, he has had the privilege to numerous quasi-secret documents on a number of CIA cases, including the Kennedy assassinations. This, however, remains on the level of pure speculation.
Media people praise Schorr mainly because of the great perspective he has when dealing with politics in the U.S. and abroad. He has seen everything after the war; from The Red Scare to Watergate; from 'Nam to Afghanistan. He was also an attendant of world superpower summits, for example, the Eisenhower-Khrushchev meeting in 1955 and the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting in 1988. Although not a prominent journalist anymore, mainly because of his retirement from television, Schorr can still be heard on the National Public Radio, where he has worked since 2005.
