CBS News correspondent and Army veteran Richard Wagner dead at 85

Former CBS Information correspondent Richard Wagner has died.
CBS Information

Longtime CBS Information correspondent and US Military veteran Richard Wagner has died on the age of 85.

Wagner’s spouse, Donna Lewis-Wagner, confirmed information of his loss of life to Deadline, revealing he died at his dwelling in Charlottesville, Va., on Tuesday. She didn't disclose the reason for loss of life.

The beloved information reporter — whose spectacular profession spanned over three many years — was greatest recognized for his protection of conflicts throughout the globe, such because the struggle in Vietnam.

Wagner coated numerous assignments in Saigon in 1964 throughout his stint on “CBS Night Information” from the Sixties into the Eighties.

He additionally coated the Salvadoran civil struggle in 1984, the place he reported alongside late struggle photographer John Hoagland, in addition to Nelson Mandela’s historic launch from jail in South Africa in 1990, in response to archives. Wagner additionally reported on South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy.

His spectacular on-the-ground reporting profession earned him the Abroad Press Membership Ben Grauer Award in 1987.

It wasn’t simply abroad reporting Wagner was recognized for — he additionally coated main nationwide information tales, together with the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, in addition to NASA’s catastrophic Challenger explosion in 1986.

Wagner anchored “CBS Night Information” alongside Walter Cronkite and Dan Relatively.

CBS Information

Earlier than parting methods with CBS Information in 1993, Wagner served because the outlet’s first well being and science correspondent, Deadline reported. He additionally regularly anchored the “CBS Night Information” with Walter Cronkite and Dan Relatively.

Talking on the “Captured Tradition” podcast in 2018, Wagner stated reporting from a struggle zone was “very scary.”

“I recall as soon as a state of affairs the place we had been pinned down, couldn’t transfer, after which the barrage lifted nearly as shortly because it had begun, and I needed to swiftly get up quick now that it was secure,” he stated on the podcast.

“I stood up … I discovered my hand was shaking a lot that I couldn’t actually do it. It affected me to the purpose the place my hand was shaking so badly, I couldn’t do what I needed to do.”

Wagner leaves behind his spouse and their daughter, Kerry Wagner.