“The Selling of the Pentagon”

February 9, 1928—March 9, 2021 (complications of kidney failure at age 93): Mudd was an American broadcast journalist and correspondent/anchor for CBS News and NBC News and primary anchor for The History Channel, television host of Meet the Press, and recipient of the Peabody Award and five Emmy Awards. He was born in Washington, D. C., and attended D. C. schools, graduating from Wilson High in 1945. He had a Bachelor of Arts in history (1950) from Washington and Lee University and a Master of Arts in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1953.

He began his journalism career with the Richmond News Leader and also WRNL radio station as a reporter and was considered a “probing journalist.”

On December 10, 2010, Mudd donated four million dollars ($4 million) to his alma mater, Washington and Lee University, to establish the Roger Mudd Center for the Study of Professional Ethics and to endow a Roger Mudd Professorship in Ethics. “For 60 years,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for a chance to acknowledge Washington and Lee’s gifts to me. Given the state of ethics in our current culture, this seems a fitting time to endow a center for the study of ethics, and my university is its fitting home.”

For twenty or more years, this man spent much time covering Capitol Hill and its political campaigns and corruptions and scandals for CBS News. He was recognized for covering the Watergate Scandal and the “fallout” after, all the way to the resignation of President Richard Nixon (1974).

1979—His interview of Ted Kennedy (Democrat) was credited with smashing this candidate’s ambitions for the office of President as he was getting ready to take the lead away from Jimmy Carter in 1980. Mudd asked the “stumbling” Kennedy, “Why do you want to be the President?” Kennedy could only stumble awkwardly and could not provide answers as to why he would be a better choice than Carter. This time of interviewing actually ruined Ted Kennedy’s further chances for advancement in politics.

Mudd was liked by many, because he was “to the point” and yet “one of the folks and family.” Many viewers and even politicians thought he would probably some day take the place of Walter Cronkite!

However, when the time came to replace Cronkite, Dan Rather was given the “nod.” Mudd, seemingly in response, quit his post at CBS and moved on to NBC, working with Tom Brokaw. But, again it seems he was pushed aside and brushed off in 1983.

Going back, Mudd was seen as a REPORTER when he was at his BEST! He worked for CBS in 1961, when that network was considered the best for news, and he gained prestige for covering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, reporting day after day, rain, sun, or snow, as mostly Southern Democrats refused to “yield the floor.” He was considered to have “personalized” the “goings on” the way no other reports could!

1968—Roger Mudd was covering the Presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy and was there during the assassination on June 5, helping Ethel Kennedy to the side of her dying husband.

As narrator and chief reporter of “The Selling of the Pentagon” and its extravagant spending and public relations budget mess, Mudd received one of his five Emmys and also the Peabody and George Polk Awards for journalism.

ROGER HARRISON MUDD one time admitted that “he could be a pain in the neck and elsewhere.” Most observers said that this was one of his strongest points! He also once called “being an anchorman” one of the “most boring jobs in television news” and little more than “hood ornaments for their companies.”

For those of us who liked REAL NEWS REPORTING, Mr. Mudd will be missed. He, in my opinion, was not afraid to report what he really saw and heard!