Roger Mudd | |
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 Mudd at a taping ofChristmas in Washington in 1982 | |
| Born | Roger Harrison Mudd (1928-02-09)February 9, 1928 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Died | March 9, 2021(2021-03-09) (aged 93) McLean, Virginia, U.S. |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1953–2021 |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
Roger Harrison Mudd[1] (February 9, 1928 – March 9, 2021) was an Americanbroadcast journalist who was a correspondent and anchor forCBS News andNBC News. He also worked as the primary anchor for theHistory Channel. Previously, Mudd was weekend and weekday substitute anchor forCBS Evening News, co-anchor of the weekdayNBC Nightly News, and host of theNBC-TV'sMeet the Press andAmerican Almanac TV programs. Mudd was a recipient of aPeabody Award, a Joan Shorenstein Award for Distinguished Washington Reporting,[2] and fiveEmmy Awards.[3]
Mudd was born inWashington, D.C.[4] His father, aWorld War I veteran, John Kostka Dominic Mudd, was the son of a tobacco farmer and worked as a map maker for theUnited States Geological Survey. His mother, Irma Iris Harrison, was the daughter of a farmer and was a nurse and lieutenant in theUnited States Army Nurse Corps serving in the physiotherapy ward in theWalter Reed Hospital, where she met Roger's father.[5] Roger attended DC Public Schools and graduated fromWilson High School in 1945.[3]
Mudd earned aBachelor of Arts in History fromWashington and Lee University, where one of his classmates was authorTom Wolfe, in 1950, and aMaster of Arts in History from theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1953.[6][7] Mudd was a member ofDelta Tau Delta international fraternity.[8] He was initiated as an alumnus member ofOmicron Delta Kappa at Washington and Lee in 1966.[9]
Mudd began his journalism career inRichmond, Virginia, where he was a reporter forThe Richmond News Leader and for radio stationWRNL.[2] At theNews Leader, he worked at the rewrite desk during spring 1953 and became a summer replacement on June 15 that year.[10] TheNews Leader ran its first story with a Mudd byline on June 19, 1953.[11]
At WRNL radio, Mudd presented the daily noon newscast. In his memoirThe Place to Be, Mudd[12] describes an incident from his first day at WRNL in which he laughed hysterically on-air, after mangling a news item about the declining health ofPope Pius XII, mispronouncing his name as "Pipe Poeus". Because Mudd failed to silence his microphone properly, an engineer intervened.[13] WRNL later gave Mudd his own daily broadcast,Virginia Headlines.[14] In the fall of 1954, Mudd enrolled in theUniversity of Richmond School of Law, but dropped out after one semester.[15]
In the late 1950s, Mudd moved home toWashington, D.C., where he became a reporter forWTOP News,[2] the news division of the radio and television stations owned byThe Washington Post-Newsweek. Although WTOP News was a local news department, it also covered national stories. At first, Mudd did the 6:00 a.m. newscast for WTOP and local news segments on the local TV programPotomac Panorama.
During fall 1956, Mudd hosted and wrote WTOP's 6:00 p.m. newscast, which included a weekly commentary piece, all without "the constraints of the wire service vocabulary".[16] Mudd produced a half-hour TV documentary in summer 1957 advocating the need for a third airport in theBaltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area.
In September that year, Mudd conducted his first television interview. The interview was withDorothy Counts, a black teenage girl who had suffered racial harassment at her otherwise all-white high school inCharlotte, North Carolina.[17] Then in March 1959 WTOP replaced Don Richards with Mudd for its 11 p.m. newscast.[18]
CBS News was located on the third floor ofWTOP's studios at 40th and Brandywine inNorthwest Washington, D.C. Mudd quickly came to the attention ofCBS News, and moved "downstairs" to join the Washington, D.C. bureau on May 31, 1961.[19][3] For most of his CBS News career, Mudd was aCongressional correspondent. Mudd was also the anchor of the Saturday edition ofCBS Evening News and frequently substituted on weekday and weeknight broadcasts when regular anchormenDouglas Edwards andWalter Cronkite were on vacation or working on special assignments.[3] During theCivil Rights Movement, Mudd anchored CBS News' coverage of theMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.[20]
On November 13, 1963, CBS-TV broadcast Mudd's documentary,Case History of a Rumor, which included his interview with Rep.James Utt, a Republican fromSanta Ana, California, about a rumor that Utt spread about Africans then allegedly working with theUnited Nations to take over the United States.[21] Utt sued CBS-TV inU.S. federal court for libel, but the court dismissed the case.[22]
In 1964, Mudd covered the two-month filibuster of theCivil Rights Act of 1964, which began in late March.[3]
Mudd also covered numerous political campaigns. He was paired with CBS journalistRobert Trout to co-anchor the1964 Democratic National Convention, temporarily replacingWalter Cronkite in an unsuccessful attempt to match the popular NBCChet Huntley–David Brinkley anchor team.[2] Mudd covered the1968 Presidential campaign ofUnited States SenatorRobert F. Kennedy and interviewed him at theAmbassador Hotel inLos Angeles minutes before Kennedy wasassassinated on June 5, 1968.[3]
Mudd hosted the seminal documentaryThe Selling of the Pentagon in 1971.[23] He won Emmys for covering the shooting of Gov.George Wallace of Alabama in 1972 and the resignation of Vice PresidentSpiro T. Agnew in 1973, and two more for CBS specials on theWatergate scandal. In 1981,[24] he was a candidate to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor of theCBS Evening News.[25] Despite substantial support for Mudd within the ranks of CBS News and an offer to co-host withDan Rather, network management gave the position to Rather after the longtimeWhite House and60 Minutes correspondent threatened to leave the network forABC News.[26]
Mudd interviewed U.S. SenatorTed Kennedy on November 4, 1979.[24] TheCBS Reports special, "Teddy", appeared three days before Kennedy announced his challenge to PresidentJimmy Carter for the1980 Democratic presidential nomination. In addition to questioning Kennedy about theChappaquiddick incident, Mudd asked, "Senator, why do you want to be President?" Kennedy's stammering answer, which has been described as "incoherent and repetitive"[27] and "vague, unprepared",[28] while the senator "twitched and squirmed" for an hour,[24] raised serious questions about his motivation in seeking the office, and marked the beginning of the sharp decline in Kennedy's poll numbers.[27]
Mudd described the reply as "almost a parody of a politician's answer".[29] Chris Whipple ofLife, waiting to interview Kennedy, recalled being amazed by[30]
a hesitant, rambling and incoherent nonanswer; it seemed to go on forever without arriving anywhere. Mudd threw another softball, and Kennedy swung and missed again. On the simple question that would define him and his political destiny, Kennedy had no clue.
Carter defeated Kennedy for the nomination for a second presidential term.[2] Although theKennedy family refused any further interviews by Mudd, the interview helped strengthen Mudd's reputation as a leadingpolitical journalist.[31]
Mudd won aPeabody Award for the interview.[24] He described as a "fantasy" Kennedy's statement in the latter's posthumous memoir,True Compass, that Mudd had asked for an interview to help him succeed Cronkite at CBS, and promised that he would not ask personal questions.[31] Mudd said "I don't think I should be known as the man who brought Teddy Kennedy down. I was the man who did an interview with him that was not helpful".[29] Whipple said that Mudd thought that the interview was a failure, and that Whipple had to assure him that Kennedy's incoherence would be a major story.[30] Broadcaster and bloggerHugh Hewitt andWashington PostcolumnistMichael Gerson have used the term "Roger Mudd moment" to describe a self-inflicted disastrous encounter with the press by a presidential candidate.[28]
In 1980, Mudd andDan Rather were in contention to succeedWalter Cronkite as the weeknight anchor of theCBS Evening News. After CBS awarded the job to Rather (which he took over on March 9, 1981), Mudd chose to leave CBS News and he accepted an offer to join NBC News.[32] He co-anchored theNBC Nightly News withTom Brokaw from April 1982 until September 1983, when Brokaw took over as sole anchor.[33]
From 1984 to 1985, Mudd was the co-moderator of the NBCMeet the Press program withMarvin Kalb, and later served as the co-anchor withConnie Chung on two NBC news magazines,American Almanac and1986.[34]
From 1987 to 1993, Mudd was an essayist and political correspondent with theMacNeil–Lehrer Newshour onPBS. He was a visiting professor atPrinceton University andWashington and Lee University from 1993 to 1996. Mudd was also a primary anchor for over ten years withThe History Channel, where many of his programs are still repeated in reruns. Mudd retired from full-time broadcasting in 2004, and remained involved, until his death, with documentaries forThe History Channel.[35][23]
Mudd resided inMcLean, Virginia. He was married to the former E. J. Spears of Richmond, Virginia, who died in 2011. They had three sons and a daughter:Daniel, the former CEO ofFortress Investment Group LLC and the former CEO ofFannie Mae;[36] the singer and songwriter Jonathan Mudd; the author Maria Mudd Ruth; and Matthew Mudd. He was survived by 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Mudd was a collateral descendant ofSamuel Mudd (meaning he descended from another branch within the same extensive family tree), the doctor who was imprisoned for allegedly aiding and conspiring withJohn Wilkes Booth after the assassination ofAbraham Lincoln.[37]
Mudd was active as a trustee of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, with which he helped to establish its popular "Ethics Bowl", featuring student teams from Virginia's private colleges debating real-life cases involving ethical dilemmas.[38] He was also a trustee of theNational Portrait Gallery.[7]
On December 10, 2010, he donated $4 million to his alma mater, Washington and Lee University, to establish the Roger Mudd Center for the Study of Professional Ethics and to endow a Roger Mudd Professorship in Ethics. "For 60 years," he said, "I've been waiting for a chance to acknowledge Washington and Lee's gifts to me. Given the state of ethics in our current culture, this seems a fitting time to endow a center for the study of ethics, and my university is its fitting home."[39]
Mudd died from complications of kidney failure at his home inMcLean, Virginia, on March 9, 2021, at the age of 93.[40][24][41]
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