Veteran TV anchor Tom Brokaw, a constant NBC News presence for 55 years, is retiring from the network today.
Brokaw, 80, has made only a few appearances on the air on NBC and its cable news channel MSNBC in recent years, while battling cancer. The former NBC Nightly News anchor – a vacancy he has held for 22 years – has been a senior correspondent and occasional commentator since 2005.
“During one of the most complex and consequent eras in American history, a new generation of NBC News journalists, producers and technicians is providing America with timely, insightful and critically important information, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” said Brokaw in a statement announcing the change. “I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
Brokaw was one of the best-known figures on the network’s news for several decades, after he emerged as a correspondent for the NBC News White House during the 1973 Watergate scandal. He began his career at NBC at the network’s Los Angeles office, where covered The campaign for governor of Ronald Reagan and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
The South Dakota native moved to New York in 1976 when he was named co-anchor for the “Today” morning franchise, where he sat alongside co-host Jane Pauley until 1981. His good looks, ability to dealing with important news and interviews with celebrities and the ability to improvise incessantly on live TV led an executive to give him the nickname “Duncan the Wonderful Horse”.
Jessica Savitch, Tom Brokaw, David Brinkley and John Chancellor in a promotional photo of NBC’s 1980 election coverage.
(NBC / Getty Images)
In 1983, Brokaw became the anchor and editor-in-chief of “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw”. He left Brian Williams’ job in 2005, but remained an authoritarian presence on NBC News, hosting documentaries, reporting to “Dateline” magazine and appearing on network election night and covering special events.
Brokaw served as moderator of NBC’s roundtable program on Washington Sunday, “Meet the Press”, for several months after Tim Russert’s sudden death in 2008.
Brokaw was the first American journalist to interview Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev and was the only American TV anchorman to report from Berlin the night the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
Brokaw’s legacy was tarnished after former NBC News colleague Linda Vester went public in 2018 with allegations of sexual harassment against the anchor. Vester said Brokaw tried to kiss her in a hotel room when the two were working for the network in the 1990s. She also said that he once showed up in his hotel room in New York without warning in an attempt to start a relationship. sexual.
Brokaw denied the incidents and a large number of network employees distributed a letter declaring their support for him.