Peter Kalischer (December 25, 1915 – July 5, 1991) was an American journalist best known for his reporting of the early stages of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
in the 1960s as a television correspondent for
CBS News. He won the Overseas Press Club award in 1963 for his reporting during the
Buddhist crisis
The Buddhist crisis ( vi, Biến cố Phật giáo) was a period of political and religious tension in South Vietnam between May and November 1963, characterized by a series of repressive acts by the South Vietnamese government and a campaign o ...
that led to the
fall
Autumn, also known as fall in American English and Canadian English, is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March ( Southe ...
of President
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm ( or ; ; 3 January 1901 – 2 November 1963) was a South Vietnamese politician. He was the final prime minister of the State of Vietnam (1954–1955), and then served as the first president of South Vietnam (Republic o ...
of
South Vietnam. In 1968, while covering 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 force ...
, he had dinner on the rooftop restaurant of the Caravelle Hotel with Walter Cronkite who was preparing a special report on the war and helped to convince him that the war could not be won militarily, that a stalemate was inevitable. From 1966 to 1978, Kalischer was the Paris correspondent and bureau chief for CBS News. He covered the Korean War, writing multiple articles about it.
Kalischer later became a professor of communications at
Loyola University, a position he held until 1982.
Bibliography
''Incomplete - to be updated''
Articles
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References
External links
Obituary from ''The New York Times''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kalischer, Peter
20th-century American journalists
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
American male journalists
Journalists from California
The New Yorker people
Loyola University New Orleans faculty
1915 births
1991 deaths