Bernard Kalb (born February 4, 1922) is an American journalist, moderator, media critic, lecturer, and author.
Life and career
Born in
New York City, he covered international affairs for more than three decades at
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', '' CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 ...
,
NBC News and ''
The New York Times''. Nearly half that time he was based abroad in
Indonesia,
Hong Kong, Paris and Saigon.
Near the end of his tenure at the ''Times'', Kalb received a fellowship from the
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is a nonprofit organization that is independent and nonpartisan. CFR is based in New York City ...
- awarded annually to a foreign correspondent - and took a leave from the newspaper for a year. He also won an Overseas Press Club Award for a 1968 documentary on the Vietcong.
He and his younger brother, journalist
Marvin Kalb
Marvin Leonard Kalb (born June 9, 1930) is an American journalist. Kalb was the founding director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy from 1987 to 1999. The Shor ...
, traveled extensively with
Henry Kissinger on diplomatic missions and later wrote a biography together entitled ''Kissinger.'' The two brothers also co-authored ''The Last Ambassador'', a novel about the collapse of Saigon in 1975.
In 1984, Kalb was appointed
Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and spokesman for the State Department. It was the first time that a journalist who covered the State Department had been named as its spokesperson.
Kalb quit this post two years later to protest what he called "the reported disinformation program" conducted by the Reagan Administration against the Libyan leader Col.
Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by ''The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spellin ...
. Kalb said of it, ″you face a choice, as an American, as a spokesman, as a journalist, whether to allow oneself to be absorbed in the ranks of silence, whether to vanish into unopposed acquiescence or to enter a modest dissent. Faith in the word of America is the pulse beat of our democracy.″
In his later career, Kalb travels widely as a lecturer and moderator. He was the founding anchor and a panelist on the weekly
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by t ...
program ''
Reliable Sources'' from 1993 to 1998.
Education
Kalb graduated from the
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...
with a B.S.S. and later received an M.A. from
Harvard University.
Personal life
Kalb lives with his family in Maryland. He
turned 100 in February 2022.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kalb, Bernard
1922 births
Living people
Journalists from New York City
Television anchors from New York City
American male journalists
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
American male non-fiction writers
American expatriates in Vietnam
American expatriates in Indonesia
American expatriates in France
American expatriates in Hong Kong
American centenarians
Men centenarians
CNN people
NBC News people
The New York Times writers
United States Department of State spokespeople
United States Assistant Secretaries of State
Harvard University alumni
City College of New York alumni
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists