Safer’s unmistakable voice was a hallmark of the classic television program for decades.
Morley Safer, the longest-serving 60 Minutes correspondent in the show’s history, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan, just one week after leaving the celebrated newsmagazine program. He was 84.
“It’s fair to say that nobody alive today has seen as much and reported on it as brilliantly as Morley,” his former colleague, Steve Kroft, said in a special, hour-long retrospective of his career that aired Sunday on CBS.
Safer, who was in declining health, became an iconic newsman in the 1960s with his groundbreaking reporting on Vietnam, broadcasting images of destroyed villages that changed the way Americans saw the war. In 1970, he joined 60 Minutes, quickly becoming a defining voice of what was for years America’s most watched news show. He would go on to file 919 reports for the program before announcing his retirement last week. Safer filed his last report in March after working at 60 Minutes for nearly 50 years.