Bernard Kalb Wiki – Bernard Kalb Biography

NORTH BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Bernard Kalb, a former CBS and NBC television reporter who quit his job as a State Department spokesman to protest a US government disinformation campaign against Libya, he died on sunday. He had 100.

His younger brother, Marvin Kalb, told The Washington Post that his death at his suburban Washington home followed complications from a fall.

Bernard Kalb worked as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, CBS, and NBC, wrote two books with his more famous younger brother, and served as founding host and panelist on CNN’s media analysis show “Reliable Sources.” ”.

Always smartly dressed in an orange suit and tie, often paired with an orange pocket square, Kalb was a tireless journalist who made virtually every foreign trip with five different secretaries of state before switching to the other side of the podium.

“You have the feeling of being an eyewitness to the developments and eruptions of the decades after World War II,” he told The New York Times in 1984, when he became a spokesman for Secretary of State George Shultz during the Reagan administration. .

You have a historical memory to draw on and you see the confidence of American foreign policy and other foreign policy,” he said. “And I find that the ability to improve American priorities, the cast of characters, the issues, etc., are very valuable in this endeavor.”

Bernard Kalb Age

The age of Bernard Kalb was 100 years.

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Bernard Kalb died at age of 100

The disinformation campaign followed US airstrikes that struck Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s compound in early 1986 in retaliation for a Libyan-related terrorist attack in Germany. It was designed to make Gaddafi think that he was about to be attacked again. The Washington Post exposed the campaign, which the newspaper said included leaking false information to journalists that Kalb knew nothing about.

“I am concerned about the impact of any such program on the credibility of the United States,” Kalb said at the time. “Anything that hurts the credibility of the United States, hurts the United States.”

Bernard Kalb work

New York Times columnist William Safire praised the resignation. “In his last official act, Bernard Kalb surpassed ‘State Department spokesman’ to become the spokesman for all Americans who respect and demand the truth,” Safire wrote.

In 1992, Kalb became the founding anchor of “Reliable Sources,” which covered reporters and how they handled stories. Co-host Howard Kurtz took over the show after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In 1997, Kalb began moderating a series of press conferences and panels around the world for The Freedom Forum, a Washington-based press freedom foundation led by former Gannett Co. executives. He was also part of a panel that monitored the Israeli and Palestinian media for incitement to violence that was created as part of the failed 1998 Wye River land security deal.

Kalb was born on February 4, 1922 in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants. His father was a tailor from Poland, while his mother was from Ukraine. He attended New York City public schools and graduated from the City College of New York.

During World War II he spent two years in the military, working for a field newspaper in the Aleutian Islands along with editor Sgt. Dashiell Hammett, author of “The Maltese Falcon” and other crime novels.

From 1946 to 1961 he worked at The New York Times, spending four months in Antarctica in late 1955 and 1956 to cover Admiral Richard Byrd’s Navy expedition, Operation Deep Freeze. Later, in 1956, Kalb was posted to Indonesia, where he developed a lasting love of Asian antiques and porcelain.

CBS hired him from the Times in 1962 and sent him back to Southeast Asia, where he was well known. He joined his brother to cover the State Department in Washington in 1975 and they moved to NBC together in 1980.

On CBS, Marvin and Bernard were known as “The Kalbs,” but Bernard lived somewhat in the shadow of his younger brother.

A widely reported but apocryphal story caused his mother to call the CBS foreign office in New York and say, “Hello, this is Marvin Kalb’s mother. Can you tell me where my son Bernie is? But Bernard Kalb never seemed the least bit jealous, sometimes even introducing himself as Marvin’s “little brother.”

Together they wrote an admiring biography of Henry Kissinger in 1974, “Kissinger” and “The Last Ambassador,” a 1981 novel about the fall of Saigon.

Survivors include his wife, Phyllis, and their four daughters, Tanah, Marina, Claudia and Sarinah.Read More…