CBS Mourns Two Legends
Two veterans of CBS News and the golden era of broadcast journalism died last week.
News writer and editor Edward Bliss, 90, died last Monday from a respiratory disorder. Foreign correspondent and producer Ernest Leiser, 81, died of a heart attack last Tuesday. The two men — whom CBS News President Andrew Heyward hailed as pioneers — logged a combined 54 years in CBS newsrooms.
Both men worked with broadcasting legend Walter Cronkite. Bliss also worked alongside Edward R. Murrow, while Leiser hired current CBS News Anchor Dan Rather.
Bliss began his 25-year CBS career in 1943. He served as a writer and editor for the program "Edward R. Murrow and the News" for several years, attaining behind-the-camera fame.
"Bliss … was a legend to (Murrow's team)," said 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt. "A better editor never put pencil to copy."
In 1963, he became Cronkite's news editor on the evening news and was the person seen seated behind Cronkite in footage of the coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy.
Cronkite called Bliss, "the editor that kept me honest, grammatically, factually and ethically. He was our professor then, for his deep knowledge and his unerring eye were ever at the service of improving our own performance."
Rather said that "Ed may have been the best writer we ever had, but he was also our quiet conscience."
Bliss left CBS News to head American University's broadcast journalism program in 1968, before retiring in 1977. He authored several books, including Writing News for Broadcast, considered a vital text in the trade, and a work about his father called Beyond the Stone Arches. His latest book, For the Love of Lois, which details his wife's battle with Alzheimer's, is due out next spring.
"Ed is considered to be the finest broadcast writer in the history of electronic journalism," said Michael Freedman, vice president and journalism professor at George Washington University in Washington. "When you talk about somebody writing a book on a subject, Ed literally did."
The son of missionaries, Bliss was born in China in 1912 and began his writing career at the Telegraph-Forum in Bucyrus, Ohio, in 1935.
In his 29 years at CBS News, Lesier "repeatedly proved he was one of the bravest and best American journalists in history—and one of the few who proved it in print, radio and television," Rathersaid.
Leiser joined CBS News in 1953, starting as a reporter on the nature show "Adventure." He then moved to the hard news division, reporting from Africa, South America, and Europe. After covering the revolt in Hungary in 1956, he was jailed briefly, then managed to get the first film of the incident to the outside world.
He also covered unrest in Czechoslovakia, Romania, East Germany and Bulgaria. Back in the United States, he reported on the 1960 presidential campaign.
After moving from reporting the news to producing it, Leiser coordinated CBS News coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy and served as executive producer of the CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite. Leiser oversaw the show's coverage of the space program, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, and turned it into a ratings leader. After he moved to head CBS Special Reports in 1967, that program won consecutive Emmys in 1970 and 1971.
Leiser went to ABC In 1972 but returned to CBS in 1975 to coordinate special events coverage, heading up the news team that reported the 1976 bicentennial celebration. He retired in 1985 but then went on to teach at Columbia University and the Gannett Center for Media Studies.
Leiser was born in Philadelphia on February 26, 1921 and grew up in Chicago, graduating from the University of Chicago with a B.A. degree in 1941. He was a World War II veteran. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, two daughters and a granddaughter.