Salant, CBS, and the battle for the soul of broadcast journalism

by Richard S. Salant

The late Richard Salant, a lawyer with no journalism background, was president of CBS News for sixteen years throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He became widely recognized by journalists as the "patron saint of television news." Salant's reputation as a news manager is the standard against which all others are still judged. He was instrumental in making CBS the finest broadcast news organization in the world at that time. Salant's CBS story picks up where Edward R. Murrow's leaves off. During his tenure, Salant confronted issues of enormous importance - Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and Watergate. He launched the first thirty-minute television news broadcast, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. He started 60 Minutes, still one of the most admired and successful newsmagazines on television. He created the news analysis slot for Eric Sevareid. He defended the independence of CBS News from internal as well as external pressures. Along the way, he hired Mike Wallace, Roger Mudd,