Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism

New York: Pocket Books, 2001. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 25 cm, 354, illus., index, some wear & creasing to DJ. Inscribed by the author. One of America's most renowned journalists details his 60 years in the field and on the air. Daniel Louis Schorr (August 31, 1916 - July 23, 2010) was an American journalist who covered world news for more than 60 years. He was most recently a Senior News Analyst for National Public Radio (NPR). Schorr won three Emmy Awards for his television journalism. In 1953 he joined CBS News as one of the recruits of Edward R. Murrow (becoming part of the later generation of Murrow's Boys). In 1955, with the post-Stalin thaw in the Soviet Union, he received accreditation to open a CBS bureau in Moscow. In June 1957, he obtained an exclusive interview with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Communist party chief. It aired on CBS's Face the Nation, Schorr's first television interview. Schorr provoked intense controversy in 1976 when he received and made public the contents of the secret Pike Committee report on illegal Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and FBI activities. Derived from a Kirkus review: Compulsively readable memoir by a reporter whose name sparks the word "integrity." For over six decades now, NPR news analyst Schorr has come to represent the best in broadcast journalism: anti-authoritarian, humanist, versed in his topic, a free spirit fueled by the simple principle of honesty and a love for cutting through the folderol to reveal all the unlovely motivations of world events. He seems to have been wherever the big news was breaking: in the Soviet Union when Khrushchev denounced Stalin and invaded Hungary; in Germany when the wall was built; in Washington when Watergate was burgled. He was usually already there as a reporter and knew the landscape, so he was able to speak from experience. Schorr's writing is a delight. Most appealing is his candor, which he uses like a scythe to cut down his quarry. It is the kind of honesty that makes one believe in the man. A marvelous memoir of an enviable life, written with style and real wit.