Richard L. Harkness (1907-February 16, 1977) was an American journalist. He was the Washington correspondent for the National Broadcasting Company from December 1942 to 1970. In the 1940s he had a 15-minute Monday-Friday newscast on NBC radio. Before going into broadcasting, Harkness was the Washington correspondent for ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pennsy ...

''. Journalism scholar Edward Bliss Jr. wrote that Harkness "suggested that resident Franklin D.Roosevelt include freedom from fear in his 'Four Freedoms' speech before Congress in January 1941."Bliss, Edward Jr. (1992). ''Now the News: The Story of Broadcast Journalism''. Columbia University Press. . P. 165. Harkness had the first regularly scheduled NBC television newscast from Washington. He interviewed government officials on the 15-minute weekly program, which began January 7, 1948. Harkness also anchored a Monday-Friday 11:45-noon (Eastern Time) newscast from Washington on NBC. Harkness headed the national Radio Correspondents Association in 1945. On November 8, 1960, Harkness joined newsmen Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at the anchor desk for the NBC News coverage of the Kennedy-Nixon election night returns. Harkness' role was explaining to viewers the use of computer vote tabulation, relatively new at that time, by the RCA 501 computer. NBC, at that time, was a subsidiary of

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

. In the 1960s, he also did news and commentary on the local newscasts of

WRC-TV WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A Telemundo outlet WZDC-CD (channel 44 ...

, NBC's owned-and-operated station in Washington, D. C. Harkness, retiring from NBC in 1972, later joined President Gerald R. Ford's anti-drug abuse program as press representative.Cox, Jim (2013). ''Radio Journalism in America: Telling the News in the Golden Age and Beyond''. Mcfarland & Company, Inc. . P. 189.

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1907 births 1977 deaths American male journalists American radio journalists American television journalists 20th-century American journalists {{US-journalist-1900s-stub