Harry Reasoner

Legendary broadcasters brought us love, hate, tragedy, and victories.

We navigate through the perils of life with Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Paul Harvey, and many, many more.

This is clearly not one of those shows.

Wipe off your chin, snuffags.

Throughout the course of time, media has controlled the country.

Legendary broadcasters brought us love, hate, tragedy, and victories.

We navigate through the perils of life with Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Paul Harvey, and many, many more.

This is clearly not one of those shows.

reviewing the past and looking to the future.

Harry Reasoner, Barbara Walters, and ABC's key domestic and foreign correspondents discuss 76-77, what was, what will be.

Later, Barbara Walters takes you to the White House for a farewell visit with President and Mrs. Ford.

Both tomorrow on ABC.

Look, th- there are sound bites out here that the electorate will get.

Uh, i- it's, it's not like it used to be, the, the days of Harry Reasoner and Peter, Peter Jennings, and the, you had the three major networks.

Now, you know, now the news cycle is not even a news cycle.

Now it's a second cycle.

They see the first episode of 60 Minutes.

Uh, there are these two hosts, Harry Reasoner, talk about nominative determinism, and Mike Wallace.

They're sitting in a, in a very simple set, the kinda thing you would see on a YouTube podcast today, and they're trying to tell people what the show is.

Reasoner says, "Think of it like a magazine for television."

But the show was smart enough to pair Wallace's intensity with other textures.

The roster included legends such as Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Lesley Stahl, who has been with the program since 1991, Steve Kroft, and Diane Sawyer, who'd moved to ABC News in 1989, where she remains.

The show was also defined by legendary essayist Andy Rooney, who gave viewers a weekly dose of wit, contrarian observation, and human interest reflection that became as essential to the broadcast as the hard news investigations.

Early on, Rooney's Few Minutes, as it came to be called, alternated with a popular point/counterpoint debate segment that would soon be phased out.

[laughs]

"Watching from New York, Ed Newman observed, 'I think we can also see that President Nixon is using chopsticks, and apparently doing very well with them.' " Over on ABC, Harry Reasoner was also impressed.

"Here is a tremendous picture, the president of the United States with chopsticks." [laughs]

Okay.

What happens when you cross a gorilla with a computer? You get a hairy reasoner.

Harry Reasoner.

I don't

know what that means, but it's a joke.

Well, Harry Reasoner used to be a newscaster from way back in the day.

I already know how it's going to end for me.

One of my kids will unplug my last report to plug in their phone to charge it.

Anyway.

In 1963, however old he was, he connects with Harry Reasoner at CBS.

And they get the assignment.

And he's 43 at that age.