Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with four veteran CBS News correspondents: Jed Duval, Bill Plante, Bert Quint and
Richard Wagner. The four started with CBS News in the 1960s – a time that’s been called the Golden Age of television news because reporters
had the capability to do their jobs free of restrictions. If they could get to a story, they could cover it. A far cry from today’s journalistic environment.
In the 1960s, there was no such thing as “embedded journalism,” where access to coverage of conflicts is controlled by the military.
AND the 1960’s were pre-cable days. American viewers had their choice of CBS, NBC or ABC for watching TV news. That was it.
Duval, Plante, Quint and Wagner all had long and distinguished careers covering news across the globe. But they had at least one thing in common. Viet Nam, the so-called “Living Room War,” because of how television brought it home to the American people, was their first big foreign assignment.
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