Morley Safer

Morley Safer (November 8, 1931 – May 19, 2016) was a Canadian-American broadcast journalist, reporter, and correspondent for CBS News. He was best known for his long tenure on the news magazine 60 Minutes, whose cast he joined in 1970 after its second year on television. He was the longest-serving reporter on 60 Minutes.

During his 60-year career as a broadcast journalist, Safer received numerous awards, including 12 Emmys, a Lifetime Achievement Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, three Overseas Press Awards, three Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, and the Paul White Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. In 2009, Safer donated his papers to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of 60 Minutes, said "Morley has had a brilliant career as a reporter and as one of the most significant figures in CBS News history, on our broadcast and in many of our lives. Morley's curiosity, his sense of adventure and his superb writing, all made for exceptional work done by a remarkable man." He died a week after announcing his retirement from 60 Minutes.

Early life

Safer was born to an Austrian Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna (née Cohn) and Max Safer, an upholsterer. He had an older brother, Leon Safer, and an older sister, Esther Safer. After reading works by Ernest Hemingway, he had decided in his youth that, like Hemingway, he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He attended Harbord Collegiate Institute and Bloor Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Ontario, and briefly attended the University of Western Ontario before he dropped out to become a newspaper reporter. He said, "I was a reporter on the street at 19 and never went to college."