Broadcast journalist Bernard Shaw passed away at the age of 82 on Wednesday of complications from pneumonia.
A Marine veteran who served in the Vietnam war and spent stints at CBS and ABC before finishing his career with a 20-year run with CNN, Shaw helped to establish the cable news channel as a credible source by serving as its chief anchor from its launch in 1980 until his retirement in 2001.
Shaw received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1994 and was acclaimed for his coverage of the Gulf War, which he delivered live from Baghdad, Iraq.
“Even after he left CNN, Bernie remained a close member of our CNN family providing our viewers with context about historic events as recently as last year. The condolences of all of us at CNN go out to his wife Linda and his children,” said CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht in a statement.
Shaw moderated a 1980 presidential debate between Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush and 2000 vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman. During the former, Shaw famously asked Dukakis if his wife, “Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”
Dukakis replied “no, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime.” The answer is widely believed to have played a large role in Dukakis’s landslide defeat.