Born in Toronto in November 1931, Morley Safer was a reporter and broadcast journalist who rose to the pinnacle of his profession as a long-standing member of the "60 Minutes" news team. While not a charter member, Safer joined the celebrated CBS weekly newsmagazine show in 1970, in just its third year on the air. By the time he retired in 2016, "60 Minutes" had become the most-watched news program in TV history (via CBS) and he had served the longest tenure out of any of its reporters.
Born in Toronto in November 1931, Morley Safer was a reporter and broadcast journalist who rose to the pinnacle of his profession as a long-standing member of the "60 Minutes" news team. While not a charter member, Safer joined the celebrated CBS weekly newsmagazine show in 1970, in just its third year on the air. By the time he retired in 2016, "60 Minutes" had become the most-watched news program in TV history (via CBS) and he had served the longest tenure out of any of its reporters.
As is often the case, some of the biggest episodes of "60 Minutes" have gained their cache on the back of a scandal. In fact, one of the biggest major scandals of the 2010s was able to give the news show its most impressive ratings in a decade.
Rigorous journalism comes with certain risks, even to life and limb, as the correspondents at "60 Minutes" well know. Then there are the more mundane …
According to his bio on Simon and Schuster, Steve Kroft is the recipient of five Peabody Awards, as well as multiple journalism and lifetime achievement awards. And when he retired from CBS in 2019, Kroft was still at the top of his game. So why did he step down from "60 Minutes" when he did? Turns out the timing was everything.
Steve Kroft is no stranger to these dangerous journalistic situations either. Not only did he serve in the US Army during the Vietnam War –- eventually becoming a reporter for the Armed Services Network –- he's reported from invasions and armed conflicts as far-flung as Grenada and Lebanon. But he got in big trouble a lot closer to home.
