CBS News reported that Bill Plante, a CBS White House correspondent for 52 years, has died. He was 88.
According to CBS News, Plante’s family say he died of respiratory failure.
“He was brilliant, as a reporter and as a human being. There wasn’t anything Bill didn’t excel at in our profession: he was a gifted writer, a first-class deadline maker and a breaker of major stories. He’ll be remembered for his reports from the White House lawn, his booming voice that presidents always answered and his kind heart,” 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl said. CBS stated that Stahl and Plante had covered the White House for a decade together.
Born in Chicago in 1938, Plante joined CBS News in 1964; prior to that, he’d began his career in Chicago-area radio at age 18 before attending Loyola University, graduating in 1959, followed by a CBS fellowship at Columbia University. Covering the Civil Rights movement — including interviewing Martin Luther King during the march from Selma. As he rose, he began covering politics as part of the network’s Chicago bureau. He also won awards for his participation in CBS News’ coverage of the Vietnam War, including of the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Plante moved to CBS News’ Washington, D.C. bureau in 1976 and a decade later was appointed Senior White House correspondent, a role he held for 35 years — covering Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s presidencies — with a break during the George W. Bush administration, when he covered the U.S. State Department.
Plante has retired in 2016.