The cause was pneumonia, his family said in a statement. With his nondescript demeanor and somber tone — his heroes were the broadcasters Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — Mr. Shaw was credited with bringing a professional polish to an experiment initially laughed off as the “Chicken Noodle Network” to challenge the Big Three networks for news prevalence. A former Marine who got his start in Chicago news radio, he joined CNN after covering Washington for CBS and reporting for ABC from Latin America, where he was one of the first reporters on the ground after the Jonestown massacre in 1978 in Guyana. Anxious about an anchor job, Mr. Shaw took his chances at CNN. Atlanta business and sports magnate Ted Turner, the network’s founder, had bet on 24-hour coverage of world events at a time when the major networks offered half-hour evening newscasts and the public’s appetite for constant news updates was untested. The job looked precarious at best when Mr. Shaw took a pay cut to sign on as a Washington-based anchor. But over the next 21 years, it became vital to CNN’s credibility and the reputation it cultivated as breaking news. He was also one of the most prominent black journalists on television before stepping down as anchor in 2001. (In 1978, Max Robinson joined ABC, becoming the first African-American anchor of a major network newscast.) Mr Shaw’s tenure was not without controversy. As moderator of a 1988 presidential debate, he defiantly asked Democratic candidate Michael S. Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, whether he would favor the death penalty for the murderer if his wife, Kitty Dukakis, was raped and murdered. Dukakis’ dispassionate response to the hypothetical — adamantly reiterating his opposition to the death penalty — was said to be a factor in his defeat by his Republican opponent, Vice President George H.W. Bush. Mr Shaw acknowledged that some viewers and even fellow journalists thought the question was “foul and tasteless”. Kitty Dukakis called it “inappropriate” and “outrageous.” But he was unfazed, insisting politicians deserved tough questions. “I realize that by asking that kind of question, that it would stir up emotions, but I meant that asking Dukakis was a stethoscope to find out how he felt about this,” he told the Washington Post at the time. “Bush savagely beat Dukakis on the head and shoulders, accusing him of being soft on crime. Many voters realize that they see and hear Dukakis but do not feel him. I asked this question to see if there was a feeling.’ In 1989, Mr. Shaw was one of the few American anchors in Beijing when Chinese authorities cracked down on student pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. “Goodbye from Beijing,” he said, signing off as the government cut live broadcasts and was forced to call in further reports. The most serious test of his skills and stamina came in January 1991, when he arrived in Baghdad hoping for an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whose forces had invaded Kuwait. The interview fell through and Mr Shaw was preparing to leave the country when he found himself stranded, along with colleagues Peter Arnett and John Holliman, as the first bombs of the US-led coalition fell on the capital on January 16. Mr Shaw climbed by the window in a ninth-floor room at the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad to watch the barrage of anti-aircraft fire as the Gulf War broke out. Phone lines to the three major broadcast networks were down, leaving CNN reporters the only American journalists able to provide live reports via satellite phones. “The skies over Baghdad have been lit up,” Mr Shaw told a global cable audience of 1 billion. “We see bright flashes falling across the sky.” For the next 16 hours, until Iraqi authorities cut off their communications, the trio reported non-stop amid the onslaught of bombs and cruise missiles, with only brief breaks for sleep. “I’ve never been there,” Mr Shaw told viewers, “but it’s like being in the center of hell.” The network received a Peabody Award for distinguished war coverage. “He literally helped put CNN on the map by being on the scene in the Gulf War,” said PBS’s “NewsHour” host Judy Woodruff, a former colleague of Mr. Shaw’s at CNN, where they co-hosted “Inside Politics ». “ Mr. Shaw continued to travel throughout the United States and around the world. In 1995, he spent more than two weeks in Oklahoma City after a domestic terrorist targeted the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building with a truck bomb that killed 168 people. He later described a sense of “post-traumatic stress” from covering such horrific events. “This has happened to me in a couple of other stories,” Mr. Shaw told CNN talk show host Larry King. “Most of us, we’re so macho, we go around pretending these aren’t factors. But let’s be real: It’s really heavy. Larry King, TV host who gave boldface names a comfortable forum, dies at 87 “I mean, standing there, a few feet away from that vertical grave, looking at the concrete floors,” he continued, “and knowing that human beings on every floor of the Murrah federal office building came tumbling down into a permanent inferno. death — that must affect you.’ Bernard Shaw was born in Chicago on May 22, 1940. His appetite for journalism was sparked by his father, a railroad worker and house painter who brought home four newspapers every night. His mother was a housekeeper. As a teenager, Mr. Shaw avidly watched television programs with Murrow and Cronkite and set his sights on a career in news. He was undaunted by the lack of black faces on these shows, later saying that he did not see Murrow as White but simply as a journalist. When Chicago hosted the Democratic National Conventions in 1952 and 1956, Mr. Shaw managed to get into the room. Live television coverage was then becoming standard practice. “When I looked up into the anchor chambers,” Mr. Shaw told Time magazine decades later, “I knew I was looking at the altar.” He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1959 and, while stationed in Hawaii in 1961, learned that Cronkite was coming to Honolulu for a story. Mr. Shaw followed the reporter to his hotel and left him repeated messages, begging for a meeting, until Cronkite agreed to a chat in the lobby. “He said the key is to read, read,” Mr. Shaw told The New York Times decades later. “We’ve been friends ever since.” Walter Cronkite dies at age 92. America’s iconic television news anchor shaped the medium and the nation Back in Chicago, Mr. Shaw enrolled in 1963 at the University of Illinois, but left when his side job in local radio news led to a job at a television station owned by Westinghouse Broadcasting. He was sent to Memphis in April 1968 to cover the aftermath of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Westinghouse soon transferred him to Washington. CBS, considered the top news network, pursued him in 1971. Mr. Shaw covered political beats before accepting an offer in 1977 from third-place ABC because of the promise of overseas experience. He was on the fast track at ABC when he decided, confusing even himself, to leave for an unknown cable venture. His wife had told him that it would be impossible to live with him if CNN ended up being a success and he wasn’t a part of it. “He knew there was a chump in me,” she said. “I saw it as maybe the last frontier in television.” He and his wife, the former Linda Allston, had a son, Amar, and a daughter, Anil. A full list of survivors was not immediately available. As his career progressed, Mr Shaw said he increasingly struggled with the “unspeakable sacrifices” his family had made for his work and the milestones in his children’s lives he had missed. After moderating the 2000 vice-presidential debate between Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman, Mr. Shaw retired, at age 60, after his contract expired. He made periodic returns to television, but mostly pursued a quiet life with his family. “I’m committing anchor heresy,” she admitted in a 2001 interview with King when she left CNN. “Most people in these jobs, as you and your viewers know, don’t quit. But a little voice inside that size 7½ head of mine said, “Bernie, it’s time to go.” “
