Murray Fromson (September 1, 1929 – June 9, 2018) was a

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

correspondent and professor emeritus at University of Southern California's

School of Journalism A journalism school is a school or department, usually part of an established university, where journalists are trained. 'J-School' is an increasingly used term for a journalism department at a school or college. Journalists in most parts of the ...

, and Center on Public Diplomacy. He was educated in the Los Angeles Unified School District, including Belmont High School in

Downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers . A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is a ...

Biography

Journalist

Fromson first went to Vietnam in 1956 to report the final departure of the French. Periodically over the next four decades he has observed the country at war and peace from the time of the U.S. involvement up through the early 21st century. Both as a correspondent and producer, Fromson covered some of the major news events of the past half century, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Leonid Brezhnev years of the former Soviet Union, conflicts in

Malaya Malaya refers to a number of historical and current political entities related to what is currently Peninsular Malaysia in Southeast Asia: Political entities * British Malaya (1826–1957), a loose collection of the British colony of the Straits ...

, Indonesia,

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

, and developments in China. In early 1968, while reporting the Vietnam War for

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 ...

, Fromson was injured by rocket fire, during the battle for

Khe Sanh Khe Sanh is the district capital of Hướng Hoá District, Quảng Trị Province, Vietnam, located 63 km west of Đông Hà. During the Vietnam War, the Khe Sanh Combat Base was located to the north of the city. The Battle of Khe San ...

following the

Tet Offensive The Tet Offensive was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. It was launched on January 30, 1968 by forces of the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) against the forces o ...

. He then returned to the U.S. where he worked for CBS out of Chicago. In the United States, he reported presidential politics, civil rights, the anti-war movement, and the conspiracy trial in Chicago (the trial of the so-called "

Chicago Seven The Chicago Seven, originally the Chicago Eight and also known as the Conspiracy Eight or Conspiracy Seven, were seven defendants—Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Lee Weiner—charged by ...

"). When the Richard Nixon Justice Department threatened to subpoena journalists' notes and television outtakes in the late 1960s, Fromson proposed the formation of the

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that provides pro bono legal services and resources to and on behalf of journalists. The organization pursues litigation, offers dire ...

. He and his

colleagues were awarded two Overseas Press Club awards for their reporting on the fall of

Saigon , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...

in 1975.

Educator

Fromson joined USC's journalism faculty in 1982 and soon founded and directed the Center for International Journalism. The program recruited and trained more than 100 journalists specializing in reporting on Cuba, Mexico and other Latin American nations. He was Director of USC's School of Journalism in the USC Annenberg School for Communication for five years from 1994 to 1999 when he stepped down to work on a memoir about the Cold War. In the year 2000, he was named a fellow in the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the

John F. Kennedy School of Government The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, publi ...

, a part of Harvard University.

References

External links

Murray Fromson's blogbio on USC Annenberg website
*
Video -- Murray Fromson: "From the Front Lines"
USC Annenberg event, April 2006 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fromson, Murray 20th-century American journalists American television reporters and correspondents CBS News people American foreign correspondents American war correspondents American war correspondents of the Vietnam War Jewish American journalists Journalists from Los Angeles American journalism academics University of Southern California faculty Harvard Kennedy School people American male journalists People from the Bronx Burials at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery 1929 births 2018 deaths