(CBS) CBS News Correspondent Morley Safer has been a 60 Minutes correspondent since December 1970. The 2005-06 season marks his 36th on the broadcast.
Safer’s body of work spanning six decades was acknowledged with a Lifetime Achievement Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the 2003 George Polk Memorial Career Achievement Award from Long Island University.
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, three 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 creator, Don Hewitt, often points to Safer's investigative report, "Lenell Geter's in Jail" (December 1983). New evidence revealed in the segment 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 war reporting's finest hours was Safer's 1965 piece from Vietnam in which he showed U.S. Marines burning the village of Cam Ne. The pivotal broadcast, on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, helped change America's view of the war and change war reporting forever.
As a CBS News correspondent, Safer has written and been the principal reporter on numerous 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 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 wires in Canada and England.
Safer is the author of the best-seller, "Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam" (Random House, 1990).
He was born in Toronto. He and his wife, the former Jane Fearer, live in New York. They have a daughter, Sarah.