Harry Radliffe II, Award-Winning ’60 Minutes’ Producer, Dead at 66

Radliffe was the first African-American to head a CBS News bureau

CBS

Harry Radliffe II, an award-winning producer for “60 Minutes,” died on Tuesday. He was 66.

Hailed as the first African-American to head a CBS News bureau, Radliffe had battled colon cancer since 2008. He died at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, according to CBSNews.com.

Until recently, Radliffe had been working on a story for “60 Minutes” about a special orphanage in Tanzania. The trip to Africa was his last for the program after 26 years on the show and 40 years in television news.

Radliffe traveled around the world to produce stories for leading CBS News correspondents, including Walter Cronkite, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Bob Simon and Scott Pelley, reported the network after his death.

In total, he contributed nearly 100 stories to “60 Minutes,” where he won the Peabody award, television’s highest honor.

“It is hard to imagine not having Harry with us anymore. He has been an essential part of our lives, our broadcast, and our entire news organization,” Executive Producer Jeff Fager said. “His body of work is among the most remarkable and diverse in ’60 Minutes’ history. He was elegant, decent and a wonderful friend to so many of us. We are all better off that Harry was in our lives. We will miss him very much.”

Born in Indianapolis in 1949, Radliffe began his career as a reporter at KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon, in 1971 before moving to the CBS News Washington bureau.

While posted in London, England, from 1980, he did stories on the Iran hostage crisis, the funeral of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the rise of terrorism in Europe, turmoil in the Middle East, and the Falklands Islands War between the U.K. and Argentina.


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