Harold Dow

Correspondent, "48 Hours Mystery"

(CBS)  "48 Hours" correspondent Harold passed away suddenly on Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010, of an apparent asthma attack. Read more.

Harold Dow has been a correspondent for "48 Hours" since 1990, after serving as a contributor to the broadcast since its premiere on Jan. 19, 1988. He had been a contributing correspondent for "48 Hours on Crack Street", the critically acclaimed 1986 documentary that led to the single-topic weekly news magazine. Dow conducted the first network interview for "48 Hours" with O. J. Simpson following the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Prior to his work with "48 Hours", Dow was a correspondent for the CBS News magazine "Street Stories"(1992-93) and has reported for the "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" and "CBS News Sunday Morning", as well as for the CBS News legal series, "Verdict."

Dow's reports have garnered him numerous awards. He has been honored with a George Foster Peabody Award for his "48 Hours" report on runaways and a Robert F. Kennedy Award for a report on public housing. He has received five Emmy Awards, including one for a story on the American troops' movement into Bosnia (1996) and one for "distinguished reporting" for his coverage of the Pan Am Flight 103 disaster (1989). He won an RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award, an Operation Push Excellence in Journalism Award and, for a "48 Hours" profile of Patti LaBelle. He also was recently recognized by the National Association of Black Journalists for his report about Medgar Evers, which was featured in the CBS News special "Change and Challenge: The Inauguration of Barack Obama."

Dow has been based in New York since 1982, when he was named a co-anchor/interviewer on "CBS News Nightwatch," the overnight broadcast that premiered in October of that year. He remained on "Nightwatch" until the end of 1983, when the broadcast relocated to Washington D.C. Dow had been a correspondent at the CBS News Los Angeles bureau (1977-82) after working as a reporter there (1973-77). He reported on the return of POWs from Vietnam and the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, with whom he had an exclusive interview in December 1976. He joined CBS News in 1972 as a broadcast associate.

Before joining CBS News, Dow had been an anchor reporter at Theta Cable TV in Santa Monica, Calif. He was also a freelance reporter for KCOP-TV Los Angeles, a news anchor for WPAT Radio in Paterson, N.J., and a reporter, co anchor and talk-show host for KETV Omaha.

Dow was born in Hackensack, N.J. He attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha.