Eric Engberg

News correspondent, Washington, D.C.

Eric Engberg has been unearthing and reporting the difference in what government says it is doing and what actually happens in his signature "Reality Check" segment of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather since 1992. He brings not only a veteran political and investigative reporter's skills to the pieces, but a touch of irreverence and humor, too, where appropriate.

"Reality Check" was begun as an attempt to evaluate the validity of charges, countercharges and political rhetoric during the 1992 presidential campaign. Due to its success and value as a journalistic tool, it has continued ever since, exploring along the way such topics as the creation of expensive bodyguard units within several Cabinet agencies to protect their secretaries, the $18 million luxury subway built to carry Senators a few hundred yards to their offices and the little-noticed revision of the House of Representatives' mailing regulations which permitted incumbents to use taxpayers' money to buy radio ads.

Engberg's experience in investigative and political reporting is impressive. In the course of covering congressional and presidential campaigns since 1972, he has reported on abuses in the system used to regulate political fund-raising and the use of radio and television advertising to influence the voters. He also covered the campaigns of Patrick Buchanan (1992), George Bush (1988), Gary Hart and Geraldine Ferraro (1984), John Connally and John Anderson (1980), Bob Dole (1976) and George McGovern (1972).

Prior to his "Reality Check" assignment, Engberg specialized in major investigative stories, including the Iran-Contra case and the Challenger space shuttle disaster. He also reported on the Persian Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the democracy movement in China following the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Engberg has served as a correspondent in Washington since 1981. Before that, he worked out of the Dallas (1976-81) and New York bureaus, where he joined CBS News as a reporter in 1975. Engberg previously worked in Washington, D.C., as a reporter for the Group W bureau (1972-75) and for WMAL-AM Radio/WMAL-TV (1969-72) and WTOP Radio (1968-69).

He was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi medal for his radio report on the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew in 1973. Engberg taught broadcast news writing at the University of Missouri (1963-68) while he was news director of KFRU Radio in Columbia, Missouri. He was born on September 18, 1941, in Highland Park, Illinois. Engberg was graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1963. He and his wife, the former Judith Ann Klein, have three grown sons.