R.I.P.: Sander Vanocur, Former Political TV Reporter

Sander Vanocur - 1986

Sander Vanocur, the television newsman who became familiar to American viewers as a prominent White House correspondent during the Kennedy administration and as a tough questioner in presidential debates, died on Monday night in a hospice facility in Santa Barbara, Calif.

He was 91, according to The NYTimes.

His son Christopher said the cause was complications of dementia.

Mr. Vanocur was the last surviving journalist of the four who, as a panel, questioned Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon in America’s first televised presidential debate, on Sept. 26, 1960. (The others were Robert H. Fleming of ABC, Stuart Novins of CBS and Charles Warren of Mutual Broadcasting. Howard K. Smith, then of CBS, was the moderator.)

He reported on politics for NBC from 1957 to 1971, along the way conducting one of the last interviews with Senator Robert F. Kennedy before Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968.

After a brief interlude at the Public Broadcasting System in the early 1970s, he was a television columnist for The Washington Post in the mid-1970s. He then returned to political reporting, for ABC News, where he was also a vice president.

As a senior correspondent for ABC in 1984, he moderated the vice-presidential debate between the incumbent, George H.W. Bush, and Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York. In 1992, as a freelance correspondent, he was a panelist for a presidential debate between Mr. Bush, Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas and the Texas business tycoon Ross Perot.

In his 1991 book, “Out of Thin Air: The Brief Wonderful Life of Network News,” Reuven Frank, a pioneering news producer for NBC, called Mr. Vanocur “the best political reporter I ever worked with.”

For a time NBC was grooming him for more visible roles, making him its weekend news anchor in the first half of the 1960s and, in 1969, host of a new monthly newsmagazine, “First Tuesday,” to compete in part with the weekly “60 Minutes” on CBS. “First Tuesday” ran until August 1973.

Mr. Vanocur was also Washington correspondent for the “Today” show. Hoping to be promoted to NBC’s top anchor post in 1971, a disappointed Mr. Vanocur left the network for PBS when Mr. Chancellor got the job.

After leaving NBC, Vanocur worked for PBS and as a television writer for The Washington Post. He joined ABC News in 1977 and worked there until 1991, holding various positions, including Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Senior Correspondent in Buenos Aires, and anchor for Business World, the first regularly scheduled weekly business program.