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OPINION – This article could contain comment that reflects author’s view.
Bill Plante, a long-time CBS reporter, has passed away at the age of 84.
Plante, who had 52 years experience in news reporting and many years spent covering the White House, retired in 2016. He was the correspondent of the network and covered all aspects of the White House, from Reagan’s administration to Obama’s.
“William ‘Bill’ Plante, one of the longest-serving White House broadcast journalists in history, died of respiratory failure on Wednesday, according to his family. The award-winning CBS correspondent was 84 years old and lived in Washington, D.C.,” CBS News reported.
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“Plante retired from CBS News as senior White House correspondent in 2016 after 52 years with the news division. He served four tours in Vietnam – with award-winning reporting on the fall of Saigon and Cambodia – covered the civil rights movement, all the presidential elections from 1968 to 2016, and was the anchor of the “CBS Sunday Night News” from 1988 to 1995,” the outlet added.
“He was brilliant, as a reporter and as a human being,”CBS News spoke with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, who was a CBS News correspondent and covered the White House for 10 years.
“There wasn’t anything Bill didn’t excel at in our profession: He was a gifted writer, a first-class deadline maker, and a breaker of major stories. He’ll be remembered for his reports from the White House lawn, his booming voice that presidents always answered, and his kind heart,”Stahl has been added.
Longtime CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante dies at 84 https://t.co/ual0UFc0bC pic.twitter.com/EBHPRsirw9
— The Hill (@thehill) September 28, 2022
Plante was highly praised by many on social media.
“Reporters are not here as guests. We’re here to ask questions. Why? Because if we were ever to agree to ‘behave,’ we’d be walking away from our First Amendment role—& then we really would be the shills we’re so often accused of being. RIP, Bill Plante,”Mary Louise Kelly, NPR’s host wrote.
“Reporters are not here as guests. We’re here to ask questions. Why? Because if we were ever to agree to ‘behave,’ we’d be walking away from our First Amendment role—& then we really would be the shills we’re so often accused of being.”RIP Bill Plante. https://t.co/sCroyCKG6k
— Mary Louise Kelly (@NPRKelly) September 29, 2022
“I loved listening to Bill tell stories about his time covering wars, presidents and countless other historic events. And then the next day he’d kick the shit out of us in the briefing room and tbh i loved seeing that too. He’s a legend who will be missed,”Tommy Vietor was a former White House assistant.
Bill’s stories of his experiences covering presidents, wars, and many other historical events were fascinating to me. And then the next day he’d kick the shit out of us in the briefing room and tbh i loved seeing that too. He’s a legend who will be missed. https://t.co/AeFwt3eNT4
— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) September 29, 2022
“Bill Plante has died at 84; he became a fixture of American television sets as a globe-trotting CBS News correspondent, covering the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, four U.S. presidents and more than half a century of national and world affairs,” Washington Post’s Emily Langer wrote in a tweet.
Bill Plante has died at 84; he became a fixture of American television sets as a globe-trotting CBS News correspondent, covering the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, four U.S. presidents and more than half a century of national and world affairs.https://t.co/vZKgIEJmGs
— Emily Langer (@EmilyLangerWP) September 28, 2022
Zev Shalev, a former producer at CBS News wrote: “Bill Plante was the White House correspondent when I was running the morning show there. A consummate professional who was always willing to try out new things and not afraid to say so when he occasionally thought an idea was nuts.”
CNN’s Phil Mattingly tweeted: “RIP to a correspondent who was an institution himself – one who was always remarkably kind to me as a young reporter, even though it was of absolutely no benefit to him at all.”
“He makes Anthony Bourdain look like a homebody,”James Warren observed Plante retire. “He’s been everywhere: Saigon, Moscow, Selma, Berlin, Phnom Penh, maybe hundreds of other places. Wars, murders, you name the genre, he was there.”
“I learned from people like [Mike] Wallace, [Walter] Cronkite, from many others,”Plante spoke to TVNewser on April 14, 2014. “I learned what was expected of good reporters. It isn’t something you can commodify easily, but you watch them work, and you see what their standards are…and you hold yourself to those same standards.”
“I’m fortunate enough and very proud to have spent 52 plus years in the best news organization in television,” Plante said at his CBS News retirement party. “CBS News is now and has always been the class act of broadcasting. I’ve had a wonderful window, a close-up, of the human condition. I’ve been able to tell the tales of civil rights and war wastes, as well as the political of power. Through it all, I’ve come to see how human nature is universal. Humans continue to act in destructive and altruistic ways. So that’s why what we do continues to be so important. We shine a light into the darkness.
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