CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, 1941-2015
Last Updated Feb 12, two thousand fifteen 12:41 PM EST
Fresh YORK — Bob Simon, the longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent and legendary CBS News foreign reporter died abruptly Wednesday night in a car accident in Fresh York City.
Scott Pelley: Bob Simon had enormous courage, acute intolerance for injustice
The award-winning newsman was 73.
“Bob Simon was a giant of broadcast journalism, and a dear friend to everyone in the CBS News family. We are all shocked by this tragic, unexpected loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bob’s extended family and especially with our colleague Tanya Simon,” said CBS News President David Rhodes.
Bob Simon 1941-2015
“It’s a terrible loss for all of us at CBS News,” sixty Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager said in a statement. “It is such a tragedy made worse because we lost him in a car accident, a man who has escaped more difficult situations than almost any journalist in modern times.
“Bob was a reporter’s reporter. He was driven by a natural curiosity that took him all over the world covering every kind of story imaginable,” Fager said. “There is no one else like Bob Simon. All of us at CBS News and particularly at sixty minutes will miss him very much.”
Simon was railing in the backseat of a livery cab around 6:45 p.m. Wednesday on Fresh York City’s West Side Highway when the car rear-ended another vehicle and crashed into barriers separating north- and southbound traffic, the Fresh York Police Department said in a statement. Unconscious with head and chest injuries, Simon was transported to St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital where he died. The livery cab driver was taken to another hospital with injuries to his arms and gams. Police were investigating but made no arrests.
Simon was not wearing a seatbelt, police confirmed Thursday. Seat belts are not required in livery cabs and are often not used by passengers.
“CBS This Morning” co-host Charlie Rose reflects on Bob Simon’s legacy
Over a 47-year career at CBS News, Simon earned more than forty major awards, including twenty seven Emmys, believed to be the most ever earned for a field reporter and four Peabody Awards.
Simon’s five-decade career took him through most major overseas conflicts spanning from the late 1960s to the present. He joined CBS News in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven as a Fresh York-based reporter and assignment editor, covering campus unrest and inward city riots. Simon also worked in CBS News’ Tel Aviv bureau from 1977-81, and worked in Washington D.C. as the network’s State Department correspondent.
Highlights of Bob Simon’s career at CBS News spanning almost fifty years
But Simon’s career in war reporting was extensive, beginning in Vietnam. While based in Saigon from 1971-72, his reports on the war — and particularly the Hanoi one thousand nine hundred seventy two spring offensive — won an Overseas Press Club award award for the Best Radio Spot News for coverage of the end of the conflict. Simon was there for the end of the conflict and was aboard one of the last helicopters out of Saigon in 1975.
Bob Simon recalls very first moment he spotted liberated Nelson Mandela
He also reported on the violence in Northern Ireland in from 1969-71 and also from war zones in Portugal, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia and American military deeds in Grenada, Somalia and Haiti.
Simon was named CBS News’ chief Middle East correspondent in 1987, and became the leading broadcast journalist in the region, working in Tel Aviv for more than twenty years.
During the early days of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Simon was imprisoned and tormented by the Iraqi army along with three CBS News colleagues. He later chronicled the practice in a book, “Forty Days.”
“. This was the most searing practice of my life,” Simon told the Los Angeles Times. “. I wrote about it because I needed to write about it.”
In 1996, he won one more OPC Award, a Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards for coverage of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. CBS News received an RTNDA Overall Excellence in Television Award in one thousand nine hundred ninety six largely because of Simon’s reporting from war-torn Sarajevo.
Saving the Children
Moving into the 21st century, he was able to get two major interviews for sixty Minutes, including the very first Western interview with extremist Iraqi cleric Muqtada al Sadr, and another with his Shiite Muslim rival, the Ayatollah al-Hakim, who was killed shortly after the interview.
Simon also lent his abilities to CBS’s Olympics coverage. For the one thousand nine hundred ninety four Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, he reported on the failed attempt of Israel’s secret intelligence organization, the Mossad, to avenge the attack on Israeli athletes at the one thousand nine hundred seventy two Munich Summer Olympics, for which he won an Emmy.
For the coverage of the one thousand nine hundred ninety eight Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he gave a 30-minute report on Louis Zamperini, an American Olympian who survived as a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese during World War II. The story won him a Sports Emmy.
Simon’s most-recent chunk for sixty Minutes aired last weekend, his conversation with Ava DuVernay, the director of the Academy Award-nominated film “Selma.” He was working on a story for Sunday’s broadcast with his daughter, Tanya, a sixty Minutes producer, about the Ebola virus and the search for a cure.
Simon was born on May 29, 1941, in the Bronx, N.Y., and was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in one thousand nine hundred sixty two with a degree in history. He served as an American Foreign Service officer (1964-67). He was a Fulbright scholar in France and a Woodrow Wilson scholar.
Simon is survived by his wifey, Françoise, and their daughter, Tanya, her hubby, Dr. Evan Garfein, and his grandson Jack, described by Fager and Rhodes as “the joy of his life, pictures of whom adorned his office.”
© two thousand fifteen CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, 1941-2015 – CBS News
CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, 1941-2015
Last Updated Feb 12, two thousand fifteen 12:41 PM EST
Fresh YORK — Bob Simon, the longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent and legendary CBS News foreign reporter died abruptly Wednesday night in a car accident in Fresh York City.
Scott Pelley: Bob Simon had enormous courage, acute intolerance for injustice
The award-winning newsman was 73.
“Bob Simon was a giant of broadcast journalism, and a dear friend to everyone in the CBS News family. We are all shocked by this tragic, unexpected loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bob’s extended family and especially with our colleague Tanya Simon,” said CBS News President David Rhodes.
Bob Simon 1941-2015
“It’s a terrible loss for all of us at CBS News,” sixty Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager said in a statement. “It is such a tragedy made worse because we lost him in a car accident, a man who has escaped more difficult situations than almost any journalist in modern times.
“Bob was a reporter’s reporter. He was driven by a natural curiosity that took him all over the world covering every kind of story imaginable,” Fager said. “There is no one else like Bob Simon. All of us at CBS News and particularly at sixty minutes will miss him very much.”
Simon was railing in the backseat of a livery cab around 6:45 p.m. Wednesday on Fresh York City’s West Side Highway when the car rear-ended another vehicle and crashed into barriers separating north- and southbound traffic, the Fresh York Police Department said in a statement. Unconscious with head and chest injuries, Simon was transported to St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital where he died. The livery cab driver was taken to another hospital with injuries to his arms and gams. Police were investigating but made no arrests.
Simon was not wearing a seatbelt, police confirmed Thursday. Seat belts are not required in livery cabs and are often not used by passengers.
“CBS This Morning” co-host Charlie Rose reflects on Bob Simon’s legacy
Over a 47-year career at CBS News, Simon earned more than forty major awards, including twenty seven Emmys, believed to be the most ever earned for a field reporter and four Peabody Awards.
Simon’s five-decade career took him through most major overseas conflicts spanning from the late 1960s to the present. He joined CBS News in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven as a Fresh York-based reporter and assignment editor, covering campus unrest and inward city riots. Simon also worked in CBS News’ Tel Aviv bureau from 1977-81, and worked in Washington D.C. as the network’s State Department correspondent.
Highlights of Bob Simon’s career at CBS News spanning almost fifty years
But Simon’s career in war reporting was extensive, beginning in Vietnam. While based in Saigon from 1971-72, his reports on the war — and particularly the Hanoi one thousand nine hundred seventy two spring offensive — won an Overseas Press Club award award for the Best Radio Spot News for coverage of the end of the conflict. Simon was there for the end of the conflict and was aboard one of the last helicopters out of Saigon in 1975.
Bob Simon recalls very first moment he witnessed liberated Nelson Mandela
He also reported on the violence in Northern Ireland in from 1969-71 and also from war zones in Portugal, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia and American military deeds in Grenada, Somalia and Haiti.
Simon was named CBS News’ chief Middle East correspondent in 1987, and became the leading broadcast journalist in the region, working in Tel Aviv for more than twenty years.
During the early days of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Simon was imprisoned and tormented by the Iraqi army along with three CBS News colleagues. He later chronicled the practice in a book, “Forty Days.”
“. This was the most searing practice of my life,” Simon told the Los Angeles Times. “. I wrote about it because I needed to write about it.”
In 1996, he won one more OPC Award, a Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards for coverage of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. CBS News received an RTNDA Overall Excellence in Television Award in one thousand nine hundred ninety six largely because of Simon’s reporting from war-torn Sarajevo.
Saving the Children
Moving into the 21st century, he was able to get two major interviews for sixty Minutes, including the very first Western interview with extremist Iraqi cleric Muqtada al Sadr, and another with his Shiite Muslim rival, the Ayatollah al-Hakim, who was killed shortly after the interview.
Simon also lent his abilities to CBS’s Olympics coverage. For the one thousand nine hundred ninety four Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, he reported on the failed attempt of Israel’s secret intelligence organization, the Mossad, to avenge the attack on Israeli athletes at the one thousand nine hundred seventy two Munich Summer Olympics, for which he won an Emmy.
For the coverage of the one thousand nine hundred ninety eight Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he gave a 30-minute report on Louis Zamperini, an American Olympian who survived as a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese during World War II. The story won him a Sports Emmy.
Simon’s most-recent chunk for sixty Minutes aired last weekend, his conversation with Ava DuVernay, the director of the Academy Award-nominated film “Selma.” He was working on a story for Sunday’s broadcast with his daughter, Tanya, a sixty Minutes producer, about the Ebola virus and the search for a cure.
Simon was born on May 29, 1941, in the Bronx, N.Y., and was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in one thousand nine hundred sixty two with a degree in history. He served as an American Foreign Service officer (1964-67). He was a Fulbright scholar in France and a Woodrow Wilson scholar.
Simon is survived by his wifey, Françoise, and their daughter, Tanya, her spouse, Dr. Evan Garfein, and his grandson Jack, described by Fager and Rhodes as “the joy of his life, pictures of whom adorned his office.”
© two thousand fifteen CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.