Bradley, Edward Rudolph “Ed”

Impact on the world

Bradley joined CBS as a Paris stringer in 1971, transferred to Saigon and Cambodia to cover the Vietnam War the following year, and was wounded by shrapnel while reporting from Phnom Penh, work that earned him Alfred I. duPont and George Polk awards. After becoming CBS News’ first Black White House correspondent in 1976, he joined 60 Minutes in 1981, where his calm, disarming interview style became a hallmark of the broadcast; his profile of Lena Horne and his interview with murderer-author Jack Henry Abbott both won Emmy Awards in his first two seasons alone. Over his career he conducted the only television interview Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh ever gave, reopened national attention on the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, and covered subjects from the AIDS epidemic in Africa to sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, amassing 19 Emmy Awards and four Peabody Awards by the time of his death.

Life & background

Born June 22, 1941, in Philadelphia to parents who divorced when he was young, Bradley was raised by his mother in a working-class household, attended Catholic boarding schools, and earned a B.S. in education from Cheyney State College in 1964, initially working as a sixth-grade teacher and part-time radio disc jockey and reporter at Philadelphia’s WDAS. He moved to WCBS radio in New York in 1967, joined CBS News as a Paris stringer in 1971, and served in Saigon, Cambodia, and Washington before becoming a CBS News White House correspondent (1976–78) and principal correspondent for CBS Reports (1978–81). He joined 60 Minutes in 1981 and remained until his death from complications of chronic lymphocytic leukemia on November 9, 2006, in New York City, at age 65.

Sources

1. Encyclopædia Britannica; CBS News; Encyclopedia.com