Howard K. Smith was born on May 12th, 1914 and died at the age of 87 on February 15th, 2002. He was a big influence in the making of television journalism and was one of the most widely recognized journalists during his television years at
CBS and
ABC; besides that, he was also a radio reporter, a highly acclaimed political commentator, and a movie star. He was married to Benedicte Traberg Smith in 1942 and had two children with her. Howard was one of the original "Edward R. Murrow boys" - journalists who had received training from the late Edward R. Murrow, one of the most important figures in American television history.
After graduating Tulane University in New Orleans, Howard worked for a local paper and also with United Press as the London correspondent. He then joined
CBS in 1941, where he was Berlin correspondent. He was the last American correspondent to leave Berlin after the war declaration. Smith later recalled his experiences in Berlin in the best-selling book "Last Train from Berlin". He was an important correspondent during the war and covered the Nuremberg trials. In 1946, after the war, Smith became
CBS's London correspondent and covered Europe for the following eleven years.
He was the chairman of the first JFK Nixon debate broadcast on television. He lost his job at
CBS in 1962, hence his liberal views of the civil right movement made the administration of the company quite unhappy. He moved to
ABC the same year, and remained there for 17 years, until eventually resigned, supposedly because
ABC cut the time allowed for his commentaries in documentary movies. During his time at
ABC, he was co-anchoring the Evening News in 1969 and he remained as a co-anchor until 1975, when he started working as a news analyst. He was the first television anchor who openly requested Nixon to resign during the Watergate scandal.
Howard's acting career was mainly limited to narrating documentaries and films. During the 80s, Smith did however have quite an important role as himself in the alien-apocalypse TV series "V". He is known mostly for his documentary work. In his documentaries, Smith covered many different events, such as the assassination of Rob Kennedy; the Vietnam War; Nixon's election campaign; and many other crucial events of the 20th century history. In documentaries such as "The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon", "What happened in Cuba?", and others, Smith focuses on issues in clear, understandable language, arguably taught to him by the late Murrow.
Howard K. Smith was surely a man that the American television will remember. Although slightly controversial (as all of the famous journalists were), he was an authority even after his former
CBS co-worker, Harry Reasoner took the role of a solo news anchor, leaving Smith out of news television for the rest of his life. He was a key journalist at numerous times, both for
CBS and
ABC; his amazing correspondence work, although sometimes freshened up to meet war-time standards, was probably the biggest achievement in his journalism career, because after the war, Smith could proudly say that he was there when men shaped history.
