Former CNN anchor Bernard Shaw passed away at the age of 82
Bernard Shaw, a CNN anchor for almost 20 years, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 82. Shaw’s death from pneumonia was shown to be unrelated to COVID-19 in a statement released by his family.
When CNN debuted in 1980, Shaw was at the helm. In 2001, he decided to call it quits.
Shaw was born in Chicago on May 22nd, 1940, and he spent his formative years there before enrolling at the University of Illinois. He had already decided then that he wanted to be a journalist. As a journalist, he first covered stories in his hometown before moving on to cover Congress, the White House, and Latin America for CBS News and ABC News.
After the 1981 assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan, during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, live from his hotel room in Baghdad during the 1991 First Gulf War, and during the contentious 2000 presidential election, Shaw was a familiar face on the screen as viewers turned to CNN to watch breaking news unfold.
Shaw was interviewed in 2014, and he discussed his ability to remain calm under pressure.
“One of the things I strove for,” he told host Michele Martin, “was to be able to control my emotions in the midst of hell breaking out. And I personally feel that I passed my stringent test for that in Baghdad. The more intense the news story I cover, the cooler I want to be. The more I ratchet down my emotions, even the tone of voice because people are depending on you for accuracy, dispassionate descriptions of what’s happening. And it would be a disservice to the consumers of news — be they readers, listeners or viewers — for me to become emotional and to get carried away.”