Voting Station

Howard K. Smith

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Commentator

The Resume

    (May 12, 1914-February 15, 2002)
    Born in Ferriday, Louisiana
    Reporter for CBS (1940-61) and ABC (1961-79)
    Moderated the first televised Presidential debate (1960)
    Hosted Face the Nation (1960-61)
    Co-anchor of the ABC Evening News (1969-75)
    Appeared in the films ‘The Best Man’ (1964), ‘The Candidate’ (1972), ‘Nashville’ (1975), ‘Network’ (1976), ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977), and ‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’ (1982) and the TV miniseries ‘V’ (1983)
    Wrote ‘Last Train from Berlin: An Eyewitness Account of Germany at War’ (1942), ‘The State of Europe’ (1949), and ‘Events Leading Up to My Death: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Reporter’ (1996)

Why he might be annoying:

    After Richard Nixon lost the race for Governor of California and told reporters ‘you won’t have Nixon to kick around any more,’ he broadcast a ‘Political Obituary of Richard Nixon’ that included a controversial interview with suspected spy/convicted perjurer/longtime Nixon nemesis Alger Hiss (1962).
    He became a hardline supporter of the Vietnam War, favorably contrasting Lyndon Johnson’s stance against North Vietnam with Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany.
    Abandoning any pretense of objectivity, he wrote a letter – on stationery with ABC’s letterhead – to Senator Edmund Muskie offering his full support for Muskie’s Presidential campaign (1972).
    After he was replaced as Harry Reasoner’s co-anchor by Barbara Walters, he compared the new format to a ‘Punch and Judy show.’
    In his movie appearances, he inevitably portrayed himself or a generic news reporter.

Why he might not be annoying:

    When he refused to include Nazi propaganda in his radio broadcasts, the Gestapo seized his notebooks and expelled him from the country.
    He left Germany for Switzerland the day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor (December 6, 1941).
    During World War II, he covered the Battle of the Bulge and the German surrender.
    He was blacklisted in the early 1950s after criticizing American foreign policy in ‘The State of Europe.’
    He quit CBS after the network refused to let him end ‘Who Speaks for Birmingham,’ a documentary on the clashes between civil rights protestors and police in that city, by quoting Edmund Burke’s admonition, ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’
    Told it was against network policy to take sides on a controversial issue, he replied, ‘I wish you had told me that during World War II when I took sides against Hitler.’
    He was married to Benedicte Traberg for 59 years.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 39 Votes: 74.36% Annoying