Byron Pitts
Byron Pitts (born October 21, 1960) is an American journalist and author, who is currently a chief national correspondent for The CBS Evening News and a contributor to the newsmagazine 60 Minutes. He has covered the September 11, 2001 attacks and Iraq.
Pitts was born October 21, 1960, to Clarice and William Pitts in Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up in working class neighborhood, raised by a single mother. In his memoir, Pitts discussed that he had debilitating stutter as a child and was "functionally illiterate" until about age 12. He attended Archbishop Curley High School, an all-boys Catholic high school in Baltimore. He went on to Ohio Wesleyan University, but spent summers in Apex, North Carolina. He graduated in 1982 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Journalism and Speech Communication.
Pitts always wanted to be a journalist. It was his goal since he was 18 was to be on 60 Minutes. He interned at WTVD in Durham, North Carolina. After graduation, he bounced around to various television stations on the east coast. During 1983-84, he reported and served as weekend sports anchor at WNCT-TV inGreenville, N.C. He was a military reporter for WAVY-TV in Portsmouth, Virginia (1984–86), and a reporter for WESH-TV Orlando (1986–88). He moved across the Florida peninsula toTampa to be a reporter and substitute anchor for WFLA-TV (1988–89). After a brief stint, he moved to Boston as a special assignment reporter for WCVB-TV (1989–94). His last local job was as a general assignment reporter for WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia(1994–96).
Pitts then moved to Washington, D.C. as a correspondent for CBS NEWSPATH, the 24-hour affiliate news service of CBS News (1997–98). He was named CBS News correspondent in May 1998, and was based in the Miami (1998–99) and Atlanta (1999–2001) bureaus and eventually New York City in January 2001.
Pitts was one of CBS News' lead reporters during the September 11 attacks and won a national Emmy award for his coverage. As an embedded reporter covering the Iraq War, he was recognized for his work under fire within minutes of the fall of the Saddam statue. Other major stories covered by Pitts include Hurricane Katrina, the war in Afghanistan, the military buildup in Kuwait, the Florida fires, the Elian Gonzalez story, the Florida Presidential recount, the mudslides in Central America and the refugee crisis in Kosovo.
Pitts other awards include a national Emmy Award for his coverage of the Chicago train wreck in 1999 and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. He is also the recipient of four Associated Press Awards and six regional Emmy Awards.
He wrote Step Out on Nothing: How Faith and Family Helped Me Conquer Life's Challenges, which was released September 29, 2009.
John Stossel
John F. Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist. In October 2009 Stossel left his long time home on ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel, both owned and operated byNews Corp. He hosts a weekly news show entitled Stossel, on Fox Business which debuted December 10, 2009, airing in prime time every Thursday repeating on both Saturdays and Sundays. Stossel also regularly provides signature analysis, appearing on various Fox Newsshows, including weekly appearances on The O'Reilly Factor, in addition to writing the Fox News Blog, "John Stossel's Take".
Stossel practices advocacy journalism, often challenging conventional wisdom. His reporting style, which is a blend of commentary and reporting, reflects a libertarian political philosophy and his views on economics are largely supportive of the free market.
In his decades as a reporter, Stossel has received numerous honors and awards, including nineteen Emmy awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. John Stossel is doctor honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Stossel has written two books recounting how his experiences in journalism shaped his socioeconomic views, Give Me a Break in 2004 and Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity in 2007.
Stossel began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV and later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City, before joining ABC News as a consumer editor and reporter on Good Morning America. Stossel went on to be an ABC News correspondent, joining the weekly news magazine program 20/20, going on to become co-anchor for the ABC News show 20/20.
ABC is reported to believe "his reporting goes against the grain of the established media and offers the network something fresh and different...[but] makes him a target of the groups he offends."
John Stossel was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the younger of two sons, to a prominent Jewish family, and graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka. He overcame astuttering problem so he could become a reporter, and is now a supporter and advocate for The Stuttering Foundation. Stossel graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Psychology in 1969 and was a member of Princeton Tower Club while there. He began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon. Stossel later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City before joining ABC News in 1981 as consumer editor and reporter on Good Morning America.
Stossel was named co-anchor of ABC News' 20/20 in May 2003. He joined the weekly news magazine program in 1981, initially as a correspondent. His "Give Me a Break" segments featured a skeptical look at subjects from government regulations and pop culture to censorship and unfounded fear. The series was spun off into a series of one-hour specials (which, Stossel stated in an interview with ReasonTV, cost ABC half a million dollars per Special), beginning in 1994, with titles including:
§ "Give Me a Break" – regular segment
§ You Can't Even Talk About It – 2009
§ John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics – 2008
§ Sex in America – 2008
§ Sick in America, Whose Body Is It Anyway? – 2007
§ Cheap In America – 2007
§ Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity – 2007
§ Cheap in America – 2006
§ Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids – 2006
§ Privilege in America: Who's Shutting You Out? – 2006
§ War on Drugs: A War on Ourselves – 2002
§ Freeloaders – 2001
§ John Stossel Goes to Washington – Spring 2001
§ Is America #1? – 1999
§ Greed – 1999
§ Common Sense – 1995
§ Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?
§ Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So
§ Boys and Girls Are Different
§ You Can't Say That!
§ The Power of Belief
Henry Luce
Henry Robinson Luce (April 3, 1898 – February 28, 1967) was an American publisher. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of upscale Americans. Time summarized and interpreted the week's news; Life was a picture magazine of politics, culture and society that dominated American visual perceptions in the era before television; Fortune explored in depth the economy and the world of business, introducing to executives avant-garde ideas such as Keynesianism; and Sports Illustrated which probed beneath the surface of the game to explore the motivations and strategies of the teams and key players. Add in his radio projects and newsreels, and Luce created the first multimedia corporation. Luce, born in China to missionary parents, demonstrated a missionary zeal to make the nation worthy of dominating the world in what he called the "American Century."
Luce, known to his friends as "Father Time," was born in Tengchow, China, on April 3, 1898, the son of Elizabeth Middleton and Henry Winters Luce, who was a Presbyterianmissionary. He received his education in various Chinese and English boarding schools including the China Inland Mission Chefoo School. He was sent to the U.S. at the age of 15 to attend the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, followed by Yale College.
Luce edited the Hotchkiss Literary Monthly. In 1920, he graduated from Yale College, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi and Skull and Bones. At Hotchkiss, he first met Briton Hadden, who would become a lifelong partner. At the time, Hadden served as editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. Luce worked as an assistant managing editor. The two continued to work together at Yale, with Hadden as chairman and Luce as managing editor of the New York Times.
Luce, recalling his relationship with Hadden, said, "Somehow, despite the greatest differences in temperaments and even in interests, we had to work together. We were an organization. At the center of our lives — our job, our function — at that point everything we had belonged to each other."
After being voted "most brilliant" of his class at Yale, he parted ways with Hadden to embark for a year on historical studies at Oxford University. During this time he worked as a cub reporter for the Chicago Daily News. In December 1921, Luce rejoined Hadden to work at The Baltimore News.
Nightly discussions of the concept of a news magazine led the two, both age 23, to quit their jobs in 1922. Later that same year the two formed Time Inc. Having raised $86,000 of a $100,000 goal, the first issue of Time was published on March 3, 1923. Luce served as business manager while Hadden was editor-in-chief. Luce and Hadden annually alternated year-to-year the titles of president and secretary-treasurer. Upon Hadden's sudden death in 1929, Luce assumed Hadden's position.
Luce launched the business magazine Fortune in February 1930 and founded the pictorial Life magazine in 1936, and launched House & Home in 1952 and Sports Illustrated in 1954. He also produced The March of Time for radio and cinema. By the mid 1960s, Time Inc. was the largest and most prestigious magazine publisher in the world. (Dwight Macdonald, a somewhat reluctant employee at Fortune during the 1930s, referred to him as "Il Luce".) Among media writers, such cryptical editor's comments as "Needs work" and "Eh?" survive him.
During his life, Luce supported many programs such as Save the Children Federation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and United Service to China, Inc.
Luce, who remained editor-in-chief of all his publications until 1964, maintained a position as an influential member of the Republican Party. Holding anti-communist sentiments, usedTime to support right-wing dictatorships in the name of fighting communism. An instrumental figure behind the so-called "China Lobby", he played a large role in steering American foreign policy and popular sentiment in favor of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling in their war against the Japanese. (The Chiangs appeared in the cover of Timeeleven times between 1927 and 1955.)
It has been reported that Luce, during the 1960's tried LSD and reported that he had talked to God under its influence.
Once ambitious to become Secretary of State in a Republican administration, Luce penned a famous article in Life magazine in 1941, called "The American Century", which defined the role of American foreign policy for the remainder of the 20th century (and perhaps beyond).
Luce had two children — Peter Paul and Henry Luce III — with his first wife, Lila Hotz. He married his second wife, Clare Boothe Luce in 1935, who had an 11-year-old daughter whom he raised as his own. He died in Phoenix, Arizona in 1967. At his death he was said to be worth $100 million in Time Inc. stock. Most of his fortune went to the Henry Luce Foundation. He is interred at Mepkin Plantation in South Carolina.
He was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 32¢ Great Americans series (1980-2000) postage stamp. Mr. Luce was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1977.
According to the Henry Luce Foundation, Henry Luce III died suddenly on September 8, 2005 at 80 years old while visiting his home onFishers Island, New York, of cardiac arrest. The Luce Memorial Chapel on the campus of Tunghai University in Taiwan was constructed in memoriam of Henry Luce's father.
