Bernard Shaw

Shaw began his broadcasting career as an anchor and reporter for WNUS in Chicago in 1964. He then worked as a reporter for the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company in Chicago, moving later to Washington as the White House correspondent. He worked as a correspondent in the Washington Bureau of CBS News from 1971 to 1977. In 1977, he moved to ABC News as a Latin American correspondent and bureau chief before becoming the Capitol Hill Senior Correspondent.

Shaw left ABC in 1980 to move to CNN as co-anchor of its PrimeNews broadcast, anchoring from Washington, D.C. Shaw’s coverage of the 1981 assassination attempt on U.S. President Ronald Reagan (with Shaw joined by former CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr, one of the first on-air personalities hired by the fledgling cable channel) is credited as helping to establish CNN as a credible and reliable broadcast news source at an early point in the network’s history.

As the leading anchor of Cable News Network, Bernard Shaw covered a variety of events that shaped the political and societal reality of the 20th century. The student revolt in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the California earthquake of 1994, death and funeral of Princess Diana in 1997, and the 2000 presidential race of the United States, were some of the news that he reported.

Nevertheless, it can be argued that the main event he reported was the start of the Persian Gulf War on January 16 of 1991.

Shaw was widely known for the question he posed to Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Michael Dukakis at his second presidential debate with George H. W. Bush during the 1988 election, which Shaw was moderating. Knowing that Dukakis opposed the death penalty, Shaw asked him if he would support an irrevocable death penalty for a man who hypothetically raped and murdered Dukakis’s wife. Dukakis responded that he would not; critics felt he framed his response too legalistically and logically and did not address it sufficiently on a personal level. Kitty Dukakis, among other public figures, found the question inflammatory and unwarranted at a presidential debate. Several journalists also on the panel with Shaw, including Ann Compton, Andrea Mitchell, and Margaret Garrard Warner, expressed an interest in leaving Dukakis’s name out of the question.

He is also remembered for his reporting on the 1991 Gulf War. His journalistic involvement in this moment of history led him to be recognized as one of the “Boys of Baghdad”. Reporting with CNN correspondents John Holliman and Peter Arnett from the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, he found shelter under a desk as he reported cruise missiles flying past his window. He also made frequent trips back and forth from the hotel’s bomb shelter. While describing the situation in Baghdad, he famously stated “Clearly I’ve never been there, but this feels like we’re in the center of hell.”

Shaw moderated the October 2000 vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman]

Shaw co-anchored CNN’s Inside Politics from 1992 until he retired from CNN in March 2001. He then occasionally appeared on CNN, including in May 2005, when a plane flew into restricted air space in Washington, D.C. He co-anchored Judy Woodruff’s last broadcast on CNN in June 2005. Shaw reflected over his 41 years in journalism, that what he missed in his personal life was not worth the success. Shaw appeared on the June 1, 2020, episode of CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront to recognize the 40th anniversary of the start of the network.