Stuart Loory dies at 82; L.A. Times journalist helped build CNN

Journalist Stuart Loory, who covered the White House in the 1960s and ‘70s for the Los Angeles Times and helped build CNN, died Friday at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 82.

The cause of death was lung cancer, said his son Joshua.

Loory, who joined the Washington bureau of The Times in 1967 during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, was in particular a thorn in the side of the Nixon administration. Loory was one of the reporters on the Nixon White House’s enemies list that was released in 1973 by the Senate Watergate Committee.

Former Times publisher and CNN Chief Executive Tom Johnson said in a statement, “Stuart maintained a professional reputation as one of the most independent, tough and able reporters of his era. He never backed away from asking heads of state the most difficult questions.”

After leaving The Times in 1971, Loory taught journalism at Ohio State University and was an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1980, he joined CNN as managing editor of its Washington bureau and served in several positions at the fledgling network, including Moscow bureau chief.

He helped create CNN World Report, which featured news segments from more than 100 countries. The program was at first controversial, in that it included reporting that was clearly biased. But Loory said the idea was to present a cross-section of views.

“If we were running only one point of view, then I think we could be accused of being propagandistic,” he told The Times in 1992. “But we run material from everyone.... I think we’ve created a marketplace of news and views from different countries. And I believe that the audience is sophisticated enough to be able to tell the difference between news and propaganda.”

Loory was born May 22, 1932, in Wilson, Pa. He graduated from Cornell University, where he was editor of the student newspaper; he earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

He is survived by his second wife, Nina; sons Joshua and Adam; daughter Miriam Krombach; stepson Lokya Tarasov; brother Melvyn and eight grandchildren.

Twitter @davidcolker