Bernard Shaw Dies: First Chief Anchor At CNN’s Launch Was 82
deadline.comBernard Shaw, the first chief anchor for CNN who helped lead breaking news coverage for more than 20 years, has died.Shaw died Wednesday of pneumonia unrelated to Covid-19, his family announced in a statement to the network.
He was 82.From CNN’s launch in June 1, 1980, Shaw delivered to viewers breaking news in a matter-of-fact yet still warm style, helping the upstart 24-hour news network gain stature against its broadcast rivals.
That was evident when he anchored coverage of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, a breaking news event that established CNN as a reliable outlet to turn to in the midst of national moments of crisis.By 1988, Shaw moderated a presidential debate, but drew some controversy when he posed a hypothetical question to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis that referred to the rape and murder of his wife.
The point of the question was to elicit Dukakis’ views on the death penalty, and it may have hurt the candidate as he had no emotional reaction to the scenario and instead delivered a straightforward response.At the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, when the network provided groundbreaking coverage of the conflict, Shaw was in Baghdad as he reported on the U.S.-led allied forces attack on the city.
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