Jerry Bowen

News correspondent, Los Angeles

Jerry Bowen has been a CBS News correspondent based in Los Angeles since 1979. He reports primarily for the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather - including its "Eye on America" segments - and for CBS News Sunday Morning, to which he contributes profiles of celebrated and not-so-celebrated Americans. He also contributes to other CBS News broadcasts.

Bowen has covered most of the major stories in the western United States of the past two decades, including California earthquakes, Arizona floods and Alaska record cold, the O.J. Simpson trials and the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots. During the 1980s, Bowen reported extensively on Mexican and Caribbean affairs, including the 1986 exile of Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier. He also covered the overthrow of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, the student revolt in Tiananmen Square and the opening of Siberia's gulag system to the Western world following the fall of Communism. Domestically, Bowen reported on Ronald Reagan's successful Presidential campaign and the 1980, '84 and '88 political conventions, as well as the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

In 1992, Bowen served as a contributing correspondent for the CBS Newsmagazine, Street Stories. Before that, he led a CBS News team to Antarctica in November 1991 for a series of reports on scientific experiments and environmental concerns at the bottom of the world.

Prior to his Los Angeles assignment, Bowen had been a correspondent in CBS News' Rome bureau (1977-79). There, he provided extensive coverage of the Middle East, including the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and take-over by the Ayatollah Komeini. Bowen reported on Papal affairs, including the death of Pope Paul and the elections of Pope John Paul I and John Paul II, and covered the birth of the world's first test tube baby in England.

He joined CBS News in April 1977 as a reporter in its Chicago bureau.

Previously, Bowen was a reporter/anchor/producer at WCCO-TV, the CBS Owned station in Minneapolis (1969-77). Before that, he was a reporter at KSTP radio and KSTP-TV Minneapolis (1968-69) and at WOI-TV (1966-68) and KASI Radio (1963-66), both in Ames, Iowa.

Bowen is the recipient of three Emmy Awards: for a 1993 segment on the Branch Davidian stand-off near Waco, Texas, on 48 Hours; for a 1988 segment on Los Angeles street gangs on 48 Hours; and for a 1982 economic report for the CBS Evening News.

Bowen was born on Jan. 21, 1947 in Atlantic, Iowa. He attended Iowa State University (1965-68) and was graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism.