Bob Simon. (Getty)
Bob Simon, the veteran reporter with CBS 60 Minutes, has been killed in a car crash in New York.
The accident happened on Wednesday evening on the Westside Highway in Manhattan at about 7 p.m.
Simon, age 73, was taken to St.Luke’s Hospital where he died. Nobody else involved in the crash was seriously injured.
The former war correspondent joined 60 Minutes in 1996. CBS confirmed the news on Wednesday evening.
He is survived by his wife, Françoise, and daughter, Tanya, who is a producer for 60 Minutes in New York.
Simon’s fellow correspondents paid tribute to him on Twitter:
One of the great writers of a generation has passed. Bob Simon was a journalist of extraordinary courage.
Heartbreaking news about Bob Simon of @60Minutes, a brilliant writer and reporter and someone I admired deeply.
Here’s what you need to know about one of America’s most distinguished journalists:
1. The Lincoln Town Car He Was Riding in Was in a Collision With a Mercedes
Simon was traveling in a hired Town Car that collided with a Mercedes and a lamppost near West 32nd Street and 12th Avenue, the New York Fire Department told NBC New York.
The two drivers suffered minor injuries.
2. He Had 24 Emmys
Simon joined CBS News in 1967 as a New York-based reporter and has remained with the network ever since. In the course of his career, he was the recipient of 24 Emmy Awards, four Overseas Press Club awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards.
He was born on May 29, 1941, in the Bronx, New York, and before joining CBS he was a Fulbright Scholar in France.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in 1962 with a degree in history.
3. This Season Was His 19th on ’60 Minutes’
(Getty)
Simon’s most recent piece for 60 Minutes was aired last weekend — an interview with Ava DuVernay, director of the Oscar-nominated film Selma.
He joined the show as a correspondent in 1998. The stories he has done in recent years include the first profile of the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan and an exclusive interview with Iraqi Shiite insurgency leader Muqtada al-Sadr..
He also reported recently on such stories as the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt’s political turmoil, and the situation in Fukushima, Japan, three years after it endured the triple tragedy of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, said CBS.
4. He Was a War Correspondent
(Getty)
Simon covered the Vietnam War from Saigon and reported on conflicts dating from then right through to the present. His reports from Vietnam were internationally praised, CBS says in a tribute.
He remained in Saigon throughout the war and was on one of the last helicopters out of the besieged city in 1975. He also reported on the violence in Northern Ireland and from war zones in Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia, Grenada, Somalia and Haiti.
5. He Was Captured by Iraqi Forces in 1991 & Spent 40 Days in Iraqi Prisons
(CBS)
In 1991, Simon was captured by Iraqi forces at the start of the Gulf War. He and three colleagues spent 40 days in prison, an experience he later wrote about in his book Forty Days. The photo above shows his release after being interrogated and beaten.
But Simon wasn’t frightened off by his experience.
CBS News recalled, “He went to Baghdad again in January 1993 to cover the American bombing of Iraq.”
