Roger Mudd - CBS News

CBS News

CBS News was located on the third floor of WTOP's studios at 40th and Brandywine in NW Washington. Mudd quickly came to the attention of CBS News and moved "downstairs" to join the Washington bureau on May 31, 1961. For most of his career at CBS, Mudd was a Congressional correspondent. He also was anchor of the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News and frequently substituted on the weeknight broadcasts when anchor Walter Cronkite was on vacation or working on special assignments. During the Civil Rights Movement, Mudd anchored coverage of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom for CBS. On November 13, 1963, CBS broadcast documentary Case History of a Rumor, in which Mudd interviewed Rep. James Utt (Republican of Santa Ana, California) about a rumor Utt spread that Africans were working with the United Nations to take over the U.S. Utt sued CBS in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York for libel, but the court dismissed the case.

Mudd also covered numerous political campaigns. He was paired with co-anchor Robert Trout in the 1964 political convention anchor booth, temporarily displacing Walter Cronkite, in an unsuccessful attempt to match the popular NBC Huntley–Brinkley anchor team. He covered the 1968 Presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and was in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Kennedy was shot on June 5, 1968.

Mudd hosted the seminal documentary The Selling of the Pentagon in 1971. He was a candidate to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Despite substantial support for Mudd within the ranks of CBS News, network management gave the position to Dan Rather after the longtime White House and 60 Minutes correspondent threatened to leave the network and sign a contract with ABC News.