Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr. (June 22, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an American broadcast journalist and news anchor who is best known for reporting with 60 Minutes and CBS News.
After graduating from Cheyney State College, Bradley became a teacher and part-time radio disc jockey and reporter in Philadelphia, where his first major story was covering the 1964 Philadelphia race riot. He moved to New York City in 1967 and worked for WCBS as a radio news reporter. Four years later, Bradley moved to Paris, France, where he covered the Paris Peace Accords as a stringer for CBS News. In 1972, he transferred to Vietnam and covered the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War, coverage for which he won Alfred I. duPont and George Polk awards. Bradley moved to Washington, D.C. following the wars and covered Jimmy Carter's first presidential campaign. He became CBS News' first African American White House correspondent, holding the position from 1976 to 1978. During this time, Bradley also anchored the Sunday night broadcast of the CBS Evening News, a position he held until 1981.
In 1981, Bradley joined 60 Minutes. While working for CBS News and 60 Minutes, he reported on approximately 500 stories and won numerous Peabody and Emmy awards for his work. He covered a wide range of topics, including the rescue of Vietnamese refugees, segregation in the United States, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Bradley died in 2006 of leukemia.
Early life and education
Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr. was born on June 22, 1941, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents divorced when he was young and he was raised in a poor household by his mother, Gladys Gaston Bradley, and spent summers with his father, Edward Sr., in Detroit. Bradley attended high school at Mount Saint Charles Academy in Rhode Island and Saint Thomas More Catholic Boys School in Philadelphia, graduating from the latter in 1959. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Cheyney State College in 1964. While at Cheyney State, Bradley played offensive tackle for the school's football team.
Career
19641971: Early career
Bradley began his career as a math teacher in Philadelphia in 1964. While working as a teacher, he also worked at WDAS as a disc jockey. While working for WDAS, Bradley covered the 1964 Philadelphia race riot and interviewed Martin Luther King Jr. Those experiences led him to pursue a career as a journalist, with Bradley later saying, "I knew that God put me on this Earth to be on the radio." Bradley moved to New York City in 1967, working for WCBS. While there, Bradley found he was primarily assigned stories most relevant to African American listeners. After confronting his editor about those assignments, Bradley received assignments on a broader array of topics. Bradley left WCBS in 1971.
19711981: Vietnam, White House and CBS Evening News
Bradley moved to Paris, France, in 1971. He was fluent in French, and while there was hired by CBS News as a stringer. While in Cambodia, Bradley was wounded by a mortar round. He transferred to CBS's Washington bureau in 1974, returning to Asia the following year to continue reporting on both wars. Bradley was one of the last American journalists to be evacuated in 1975 during the Fall of Saigon. He was awarded Alfred I. duPont and George Polk awards for his coverage in Vietnam and Cambodia. Following Carter's victory, Bradley became CBS's first African American White House correspondent, a position he held from 1976 to 1978. Bradley disliked the position as it tied him to the movements of the president. In 1978, he became one of the principal correspondents for the documentary program CBS Reports, also leaving in 1981.
Bradley won the first of 20 News and Documentary Emmy Awards in his career for his 1979 documentary "The Boat People", reporting on Vietnamese refugees escaping the country via boat or ship, at one point wading into the water to assist in the rescue of the refugees. He became known for bucking fashion trends for newscasters. His iconic style included an array of patterns, a short beard, and the earring worn in his left ear.
Bradley repeatedly turned down offers to anchor the CBS Evening News in the late 1980s, preferring instead to continue working on 60 Minutes. He won a series of awards for his reporting that decade, including Emmys, duPont citations, and a Peabody Award. In 1995, he was awarded the grand prize Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for the CBS Reports documentary "In the Killing Fields of America". Bradley reported approximately 500 stories for 60 Minutes over his 25-year tenure with the program, more than any other correspondent over the same time period.
Bradley's reporting was not without criticism. Washington Post columnist Brock Yates questioned the completeness of Bradley's 1986 report on acceleration systems failures with the Audi 5000 sedan and why Audi engineers reportedly could not reproduce the problem. In 1989, Bradley reported on daminozide, a chemical used on apples, as well as seven pesticides used on the fruit. His report called daminozide a carcinogen particularly dangerous to children and sparked a national panic. Scientists with the American Society of Toxiocology noted a lack of scientific evidence in Bradley's report and the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration issued a joint statement 18 days after Bradley's story aired, declaring apples safe to eat. A trade group of apple growers from Washington sued 60 Minutes after the story aired, but had their claims dismissed after the United States Supreme Court upheld an appeals court ruling that the association failed to disprove Bradley's story. His coverage of Kathleen Willey, who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct in the 1990s, drew criticism for not pushing Willey in his interview, giving her a disproportionate amount of airtime, and leaving out important information from Clinton's attorney Robert Bennett. The integrity of his December 2003 interview with Michael Jackson was also called into question after CBS refused to air a music special unless Jackson discussed molestation charges with CBS News. Jackson was paid an undisclosed sum for the special by CBS's entertainment division.
Illness and death
Bradley was diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia in his later years, keeping the illness secret from many, including colleagues such as Wallace. Bradley died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on November 9, 2006, at the age of 65.
More than 2,000 people attended Bradley's funeral service at Riverside Church in New York. Among the attendees were the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, musicians Jimmy Buffett and Wynton Marsalis, journalists Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. In April 2007, Bradley was honored with a jazz funeral mass and procession at St. Augustine Church during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.]]
Morley Safer described the themes of Bradley's reporting as "justice, justice served and justice denied". Broadcast on October 15, 2006, the 60 Minutes edition that had Bradley's interview with the Duke lacrosse players had nearly 17 million viewers. It was the ninth-most watched show that week and one of the highest rated episodes of the year. Bradley was seen as an inspiration for Black Americans, with columnist Clarence Page writing:
Salim Muwakkil wrote for The Progressive about Bradley's impact on Black journalists, noting that Bradley "proved blacks not only could do the job, but they could do it with panache". Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for Slant Magazine, said Bradley forced audiences and the television news industry to "accept him on his own terms" and that he "annihilate[d] received wisdom about what it meant to be a professional journalist, a black man and an American".
Philanthropy and honors
In 1994, Bradley and the Radio Television News Directors Association Foundation started a scholarship program in his name for journalists of color. It awards $10,000 annually.
Bradley was named one of the "100 Outstanding American Journalists in the last 100 years" in 2012 by faculty at New York University. In 2015, the Pennsylvania General Assembly renamed City Avenue in Philadelphia "Ed Bradley Way". A mural of Bradley was completed in the city in 2018, and a historical marker was installed in 2021.
Personal life
Bradley was fond of jazz and hosted Jazz at Lincoln Center on National Public Radio. He performed with Jimmy Buffett and the Neville Brothers and was referred to as "the fifth Neville brother" by the group. He was an outdoorsman, and often hiked or skied in his free time.
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|Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award
|Columbia University
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|rowspan="1"|1981
|"Blacks in America: With All Deliberate Speed?"
|Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award
|Columbia University
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|rowspan="4"|1995
|rowspan="2"|"Semipalatinsk"
|Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award
|Columbia University
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|rowspan="2"|1998
|"Enter the Jury Room"
|Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award
|Columbia University
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|rowspan="2"|2000
|"Death by Denial"
|Peabody Award
|National Association of Broadcasters
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|Lifetime achievement in electronic reporting
|Paul White Award
|Radio Television Digital News Association
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|rowspan="3"|2001
|"Timothy McVeigh"
|News and Documentary Emmy Award
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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|"Ten Extraordinary Women"
|Outstanding Coverage of a Continuing News Story
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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|"Columbine"
|Outstanding Investigative JournalismLong Form
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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|"Unhealthy Diagnosis"
|Emmy Award for Business and Financial Reporting
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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|"A New Lease on Life"
|Outstanding Feature Story in a News Magazine
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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|2004
|"Alice Coles of Bayview"
|Outstanding Feature Story in a News Magazine
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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|rowspan="3"|2005
|Career excellence
|Lifetime Achievement Award
|National Association of Black Journalists
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|rowspan="2"|2006
|"First Man"
|Outstanding Interview in a News Magazine
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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|Career excellence
|Lew Klein Award for Excellence
|Temple University
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|rowspan="4"|2007
|rowspan="2"|"The Duke Rape case"
|George Foster Peabody Award
|National Association of Broadcasters
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|"Hunting the Homeless"
|Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a News Magazine
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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|Career excellence
|Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame
|Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia
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|Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story in a News Magazine
|Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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See also
- History of African Americans in Philadelphia
- The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
- List of Cheyney University of Pennsylvania alumni
- List of people from Philadelphia
- National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame