CBS News' Morley Safer Retires

Morley Safer

Morley Safer, a CBS News fixture and the longest serving correspondent for “60 Minutes,” will formally retire this week.

CBS News announced Wednesday that Safer’s career will be celebrated in a special hour-long program right after the regular Sunday edition of “60 Minutes” on CBS stations nationwide. Safer is among the household names – along with the late Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, Bob Simon, and Andy Rooney, as well as Steve Kroft, Lesley Stahl and several others – who made “60 Minutes” a nationally celebrated treasure.

“After more than 50 years of broadcasting on CBS News and ’60 Minutes,’ I have decided to retire. It’s been a wonderful run, but the time has come to say goodbye to all of my friends at CBS and the dozens of people who kept me on the air,” Safer said in a statement. “But most of all I thank the millions of people who have been loyal to our broadcast.”

Safer, 84, was born in Toronto, Canada, and covered major stories around the world for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before he joined CBS News in April 1964. He began his CBS News career as a correspondent in the London bureau, and opened the CBS News Saigon Bureau in 1965.

That year, one of Safer’s CBS News dispatches changed war reporting when it showed Marines torching the homes of villagers in Cam Ne, South Vietnam. The report, which appeared on the “CBS Evening News” with Walter Cronkite, was cited by NYU as one of the best pieces of American journalism in the 20th century.

Safer became CBS News’ London bureau chief in 1967, covering Europe, Africa and the Middle East and returning to Vietnam to cover the war.



Safer’s body of work has earned him the Fred Friendly First Amendment Award from Quinnipiac College, as well as special recognition from the Canadian Journalism Foundation. He has also received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards First Prize for Domestic Television for his report about a controversial school, “School for the Homeless,” CBS News noted.

Safer has also won 12 Emmys, three Overseas Press Club Awards, three Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, two George Polk Memorial Awards and the Radio/Television News Directors Association’s highest honor, the Paul White Award. In 1995, he was also named a Chévalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.