September 20, 2001

DANIEL SCHORR TO GIVE THE 2001 SAMMONS MEDIA ETHICS LECTURE AT SMU OCT. 11

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DALLAS (SMU) -- Veteran journalist and news analyst Daniel Schorr will give the third annual Rosine Smith Sammons Lecture in Media Ethics at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 11, in Caruth Auditorium, 6101 Bishop Boulevard on the campus of Southern Methodist University. The event is free; however, tickets are required and are available through the Meadows ticket office at 214-768-2787. The Sammons Lecture Series is presented by the Division of Journalism of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts.

Schorr, 85, is the last of Edward R. Murrow’s legendary CBS team still fully active in journalism. His career spans more than six decades and includes coverage of many of the most notable events of the 20th century. As a foreign correspondent in the 1940s he witnessed postwar reconstruction, the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO. In 1953, he reported on the McCarthy hearings, scored the first-ever U.S. television interview with Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev in 1957, landed an exceptionally rare interview with Fidel Castro and, in the early 1960s, covered the building of the Berlin Wall. In 1972 he became CBS’s chief correspondent on the Watergate scandal, a role for which many baby boomers remember him today. Schorr resigned from CBS several years later in a dispute involving the House of Representatives’ intelligence investigating committee, and accepted an appointment as Regents Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1979, Ted Turner asked Schorr to help launch the Cable News Network (CNN). After serving in Washington as its senior correspondent, Schorr left CNN in 1985 and has since worked primarily for National Public Radio (NPR). Today he is NPR’s senior news analyst, interpreting national and international events for “All Things Considered,” “Weekend Edition Saturday” and “Weekend Edition Sunday.”

“Daniel Schorr is one of the most respected journalists in the country,” said Ralph Langer, chair of SMU’s Division of Journalism. “He has been close to many of the historic events in the past 60 years. And he has thought about what he has seen and experienced. He is a real treasure.”

Schorr has earned numerous awards, including three Emmys, a Peabody and a DuPont-Columbia Golden Baton (broadcasting’s Pulitzer equivalent), and has been inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Professional Journalists. His memoir, Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism, was published in May to critical acclaim.

The Rosine Smith Sammons Lecture Series in Media Ethics is funded by an endowment from Mary Anne Sammons Cree of Dallas. The series is named in honor of her mother, Rosine Smith Sammons, who graduated from SMU in the 1920s with a degree in journalism. The endowment will provide permanent resources for the Meadows School of the Arts to present annual lectures focusing on media ethics.