Morley Safer

Correspondent, "60 Minutes"

(CBS)  Morley Safer has been a "60 Minutes" correspondent since December 1970. The 2009-10 season marks his 39th on the broadcast.

Safer's body of work spanning six decades was just acknowledged with the Fred Friendly First Amendment Award from Quinnipiac College and special recognition from the Canadian Journalism Foundation. He has also received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards First Prize for Domestic Television for his insightful report about a controversial school, "School for the Homeless" (February 2001). Safer's newsmaking reports and interviews have been honored with numerous other awards, including 12 Emmys, three Overseas Press Club Awards, four George Foster Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, two George Polk Memorial Awards and the Paul White Award from the Radio/Television News Directors Association (RTNDA). In 1995, he was named a Chévalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

When citing "60 Minutes'" finest hour, its original executive producer, Don Hewitt, often points to Safer's investigative report "Lenell Geter's in Jail" (December 1983). Safer reported on new evidence that resulted in the release from prison of Lenell Geter, an engineer wrongly convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to a life term in Texas. The report received national attention and was honored with three prestigious broadcast journalism awards.

One of journalism's finest hours was Safer's 1965 piece from Vietnam in which he showed U.S. Marines burning the village of Cam Ne. This pivotal broadcast, on the "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite," was one of the realistic reports that helped change America's view of the war and changed war reporting forever.

As a CBS News correspondent, Safer has written and been the principal reporter on documentaries, including the "CBS Reports" series. In May 1994, he hosted "One for the Road: A Conversation with Charles Kuralt and Morley Safer," a CBS News special marking colleague Charles Kuralt's retirement.

Safer joined CBS News in April 1964 as a correspondent based in the London bureau. He opened CBS News' Saigon bureau in 1965, served two tours in Vietnam and received several major broadcasting honors for his reporting. In 1967, he was named London bureau chief, a position he held for three years. In that post, he covered Europe, Africa and the Middle East. As London bureau chief, Safer returned to Vietnam to cover the war.

In December 1970, he left London to join "60 Minutes" in New York.

Prior to joining CBS News, Safer was a correspondent and producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He began his career as a reporter for a variety of newspapers and wire services in Canada and England.

Safer is the author of the best-seller Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam (Random House, 1990).

He was born Nov. 8, 1931, in Toronto. He and his wife, the former Jane Fearer, live in New York. They have a daughter, Sarah.