Daniel Schorr

On Saturday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Jim Axelrod reported on the death of former CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, declaring that he "was an old-school broadcast journalist, he was the last working reporter who'd been one of Edward R. Morrow's boys." An on-screen headline read: "Celebrating Daniel Schorr; Legendary Journalist Dead at 93."

Axelrod touted Schorr's reporting from CBS's Washington bureau, "ending up on Richard Nixon's enemies list during Watergate, which he always called his greatest achievement." He briefly noted Schorr being fired from CBS after reporting a leaked classified CIA report, and described the reporter's time at CNN and NPR in later years. Axelrod quoted one NPR colleague of Schorr, Scott Simon: "'Dan Schorr was around from the Russian Revolution to the digital revolution.'" Axelrod remarked: "Simon could have added 'and we were all better informed for it.'" He never used the word liberal to describe Schorr.

As NewsBusters' Brent Baker earlier reported, one way in which Schorr infamously "informed" viewers while at CBS was to compare Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater to the neo-Nazi movement in Germany: "It looks as though Senator Goldwater, if nominated, will be starting his campaign here in Bavaria, center of Germany's right wing....Hitler's one-time stomping ground....there are signs that the American and German right wings are joining up."

Daniel Schorr’s passing on Friday, at age 93, reminded me of the kind of assaults CBS News unleashed on conservatives before there were any countervailing forums available. A 2001 Weekly Standard article (nine years in my “pending” file!) detailed a particularly vicious left-wing hit piece he narrated in 1964 which linked Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater with neo-Nazis in Germany, a CBS Evening News story notorious enough to earn a mention – if without any censure – in the New York Times and Washington Post obituaries.

In a June of 2001 Weekly Standard review of a memoir by Schorr about his years with CBS, CNN and NPR, Andrew Ferguson recited the piece which aired during the GOP’s convention:

“It looks as though Senator Goldwater, if nominated, will be starting his campaign here in Bavaria, center of Germany's right wing” also known, Schorr added helpfully, as “Hitler's one-time stomping ground.” Goldwater, he went on, had given an interview to Der Spiegel, “appealing to right-wing elements in Germany,” and had agreed to speak to a conclave of, yes, “right-wing Germans.” “Thus," Schorr concluded, “there are signs that the American and German right wings are joining up.” Now back to you, Walter, and have a nice day!

Ferguson pointed out what eluded the Washington Post and New York Times: “Though easily checkable, it was false in all its particulars” and “was false in its obvious implication of an Anschluss between German neo-Nazis and U.S. Republicans.” Nonetheless, “if Schorr was embarrassed by the Goldwater episode, his memoir shows no signs of it.”

Washington Post staff writer Patricia Sullivan on Saturday managed to avoid using the word liberal in her front page obituary for left-wing journalist Daniel Schorr. According to Sullivan, Schorr was “a combative broadcast reporter who over six decades broke major national stories while also provoking presidents, foreign leaders, the KGB, the CIA and his bosses at CBS and CNN.”

The fact that in 1973 the then-CBS reporter made Richard Nixon’s enemies list merely confirmed his “outsider status.” In later life, Schorr began contributing commentaries to NPR. Sullivan touted the writer's "gravitas":  

In his weekly interview on Weekend Edition Saturday, National Public Radio "senior news analyst" (read: unrebutted liberal commentator) Daniel Schorr saw something "menacing" in Capitol Hill’s failure to pass a big ultraliberal agenda. It’s "more menacing than simply whether one or another winds a couple of seats in the Congress."

That’s an easy thing for a 93-year-old government-paid commentator with no term limits to say. Schorr was circulating the same liberal "wisdom" of the week that Sen. Evan Bayh has identified that Washington is somehow "dysfunctional" or "broken" when ultraliberal bills that are not popular in the polls aren’t rammed through boldly and persistently:

If someone decided to commit mass murder after hearing hot talk on the radio, NPR "senior news analyst" Daniel Schorr wouldn’t really suggest blaming the talk radio host. He’d suggest blaming the radio itself. That’s the weird tone of his Wednesday commentary, titled "Was the Internet Complicit in Fort Hood Shooting?"

Schorr explored blame for that mysterious "series of tubes" that is the Internet: "From what is publicly known about Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused killer of 13 in a rampage at Fort Hood, he had no accomplice — unless you count the Internet in which he communed, exchanging sinister thoughts with an extremist cleric."

This is the kind of analysis that would inspire humor, if it wasn't already odd: if we can blame the Internet for Fort Hood, does that mean Al Gore is somehow responsible for the tragedy?

The long-time CBS correspondent didn’t really want to rush to blame a radical imam for Major Hasan’s violent turn:

NPR "senior news analyst" Daniel Schorr recited the socialist sermon on Wednesday night’s All Things Considered: nationalized health care "would save many lives," and all that bother about providing taxpayer-subsidized abortions and health care for illegal aliens are tiresome "distractions" from the urgent need for more government. Schorr lamented:

Barring illegal from insurance benefits doesn't bar them from receiving treatment in a hospital emergency room. ERs have become the place of treatment of last resort for too many people here legally or illegally. T.R. Reid tells of a dramatic case in his book "The Healing of America." Nikki White lost her job and health insurance as a result of having a type of lupus. Because of her pre-existing condition, she couldn't get new health insurance. Eventually, she collapsed and was taken to the emergency room. Three doctors undertook to treat her until her condition stabilized. That involved six months in critical care and 25 surgical operations. Then she went home, still without insurance, and died at the age of 32. Her doctor, Amylyn Crawford, said: Nikki died of complications of the failing American health care system.

The impending nomination of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State has caused a complete mental breakdown among the usually punctilious ethicists in the media. Suddenly, there is no conflict of interest worth investigating, especially Bill Clinton’s multiplicitous foreign connections through the Clinton Global Initiative. Listen to the bow-to-our-king tone coming from NPR "news analyst" Daniel Schorr on Weekend Edition Saturday:

SCOTT SIMON, host: Does Bill Clinton become a complicating factor? Because he not only has financial interests all over the world one way or another, but in some ways, he's been conducting his own foreign policy campaign.

SCHORR: Well, somewhat. Well, he could be a problem but apparently he has satisfied Mr. Obama that he will not be a problem. He has surfaced everything that he got in the way of money from Arab and other countries for his library and for himself. He apparently has given promise that in the future, he will not do anything in his own travels around the world that will interfere with his wife as secretary of state. And if the president-elect is satisfied, I suppose we must all be.

NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr has a new book out, a package of his radio commentaries. In a nod to where the NPR brand appeals most, Schorr will be selling his book at a members-only meeting of the Woman’s National Democratic Club next week, as Fishbowl DC passes along:

"Legendary broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr will speak about and sign his book, Come to Think of It at a luncheon program co-sponsored by the English-Speaking Union on Tuesday, February 19 at the Woman's National Democratic Club. ... The cost of the program is $30. For tickets, contact the English-Speaking Union at esuwdc.net/(202) 234-4602, or the Woman's National Democratic Club at (202) 232-7363."

NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr is torn over the two Democratic front runners Sens. Clinton and Obama. This according to a weekly newsletter from Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore in Washington, D.C.

As taken from the January 30 e-mail newsletter (emphasis mine; h/t Carter Wood):