Journalist Bernard Kalb, the founding anchor of CNN’s Reliable Sources, has died. He was 100. During the 1980s, Kalb briefly served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and a spokesman for the State Department during President Ronald Reagan’s administration.
Kalb died at his home in North Bethesda, Maryland Sunday. The cause was complications from a fall, his younger brother, journalist Marvin Kalb, told The Washington Post. In addition to his brother, Kalb is survived by his wife, Phyllis Bernstein, four daughters, and nine grandchildren.
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Kalb was born in Manhattan on Feb. 4, 1922, to Jewish immigrants from Russia. After graduating from City College of New York, he joined the Army and worked at an Alaskan newspaper under the direction of writer Dashiell Hammett. After covering World War II, Kalb joined the New York Times but was assigned to cover overseas news for the radio desk. While there, he traveled to the South Pole in 1955 with arctic explorer Adm. Richard E. Byrd.
After a decade at the Times, Kalb switched to television journalist in 1962. He joined CBS News and helped open the Hong Kong bureau. He produced an award-winning documentary on the Viet Cong in 1968 and was with President Richard M. Nixon during his 1972 trip to China. At CBS News, Kalb became associated with his work covering the State Department. After traveling extensively with Henry Kissinger, he and his brother Marvin wrote a 1974 biography on the Secretary of State. In 1981, they also wrote The Last Ambassador, a fictional novel set during the fall of Saigon.
Following a brief tenure at NBC News, Kalb’s career took a surprising turn in January 1985. That month, he joined the Reagan administration as a spokesman for the State Department. Kalb’s now-former colleagues found him unhelpful as a spokesman, but the job lasted less than two years.
In October 1986, he was surprised when he saw reporting in the Washington Post that the administration was secretly planning to weaken Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi by sharing false information. Kalb said he had no idea about the plan and resigned. “You face a choice – as an American, as a spokesman, as a journalist – whether to allow oneself to be absorbed in the ranks of silence, whether to vanish into unopposed acquiescence or to enter a modest dissent,” Kalb said at the State Department.
During the 1990s, Kalb moved to CNN. He was the first host of Reliable Sources, a Sunday morning talk show analyzing the news media. After leaving the show, Kalb continued traveling as a lecturer and moderator. Howard Kurtz took over in 1998, with Brian Stelter hosting from 2013 until the show’s cancellation in August 2022.
