Bruce Morton dies at 83; veteran newscaster for CBS, CNN

Television newscaster Bruce Morton, who came into the nation’s living rooms for more than four decades with reports on the Vietnam War, space missions, Watergate, civil rights and political races, died Friday at his home in Washington. He was 83.

The cause was cancer, said a spokesman for CBS, where he worked for 29 years. He spent the last 13 years of his career with CNN, retiring in 2006. He won six Emmys for his coverage at CBS.

Morton was an erudite, low-key presence during the golden years of network news, known for his ability to explain national and world situations. On a PBS NewsHour report in 2000, he recalled a time when broadcast reporters generally had more time for explanatory pieces.

“Eric Sevareid, the old CBS commentator, used to have a saying, which was ‘news every other day,’” Morton said. “And what he meant was, sometimes you wanted some time to think about things.”

Morton managed to do those kind of pieces, even in the era of the 24-hour news cycle. For a 2005 commentary about civil-rights protester Rosa Parks shortly after she died, Morton told how she had refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white person.

“And so she sat, and lit a fire which burned hot and strong all over America,” he said. “She resisted, just the way we’d all want our daughters to resist: polite, soft-spoken and tough as nails.”

Morton was born on Oct. 28, 1930, in Norwalk, Conn., and grew up in Chicago. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1952.

After serving in the Army for three years, he worked for several news outlets, joining CBS News’ Washington bureau in 1964.

Never one to specialize, Morton covered the Vietnam War in 1966 and 1967, the Gemini and Apollo space flights, and just about every major national election.

By 1994, however, his appearances were relegated mostly to weekend programs, making him feel “less comfortable and certainly less used,” he told the Dallas Morning News. He jumped to CNN, saying he found the energy of a round-the-clock news broadcast infectious. “The shop is just full of young, enthusiastic people having a good time covering the news. I found all this hard-charging, we-can-do-it stuff very pleasant.”

“Bruce could tell a story like no other, as he effortlessly weaved facts, emotion and history into every one of his news stories,” CNN Washington bureau chief Sam Feist said Friday in a staff memo. “A story about a Senate race might be full of references to Lyndon Johnson, Richard Russell, or even Daniel Webster.

“Simply put, Bruce was a modern day news poet.”

Morton’s survivors include his daughter, Sarah, and son, Alec, both of New York City.

david.colker@latimes.com
Twitter: @davidcolker