Eric Sevareid (1912–92,) fully Arnold Eric Sevareid, was an American author and CBS News journalist 1939–77. A radio reporter during World War II, he was the first to report the 1940 Fall of Paris.
Born in Velva, North Dakota, Sevareid became a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal (1936–37) while a political science student at the University of Minnesota. He later studied in London and Sorbonne University, where he worked as an editor for United Press.
Sevareid became city editor of the Paris Herald Tribune and later joined CBS as a foreign correspondent based in Paris. He and Walter Cronkite were one of the “Murrow’s Boys,” a group of elite war correspondents hired by CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow for CBS’ nascent TV news operation. In late 1940 Sevareid returned to the U.S. until 1943, when he was assigned to East Asia.
After the war, Sevareid took assignments in France, Germany, Britain, and the United States. For thirteen years, he was an eloquent commentator and scholarly writer on the CBS Evening News, and won Emmy and Peabody Awards.
Sevareid wrote a weekly syndicated column and published such books as Not So Wild a Dream (1946,) In One Ear (1952,) Small Sounds in the Night (1956,) and This is Eric Sevareid (1964.) He narrated the American history series Between the Wars (1978.) He hosted the PBS Enterprise (1981) show and the syndicated newsmagazine Eric Sevareid’s Chronicle (1982.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Eric Sevareid
The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.
—Eric Sevareid
Topics: Freedom
Men want power in order to do something. Boys want power in order to be something.
—Eric Sevareid
Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.
—Eric Sevareid
Topics: Christmas
With breathtaking rapidity, we are destroying all that was lovely to look at and turning America into a prison house of the spirit. The affluent society, with relentless single-minded energy, is turning our cities, most of suburbia and most of our roadways into the most affluent slum on earth.
—Eric Sevareid
Consultant: an ordinary guy more than 50 miles from home.
—Eric Sevareid
Topics: Knowledge
Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks.
—Eric Sevareid
Topics: Television
As long as we know in our hearts what Christmas ought to be, Christmas is.
—Eric Sevareid
Topics: Christmas
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
—Eric Sevareid
Topics: Problems
Tenacity is a pretty fair substitute for bravery, and the best form of tenacity I know is expressed in a Danish fur trapper’s principle: “The next mile is the only one a person really has to make.”
—Eric Sevareid
Topics: Perseverance
Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt.
—Eric Sevareid
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