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Mudd’s son Jonathan told CNN his father died of kidney failure. He was 93 years old.
Mudd began his television career in the 1950s in Richmond, Virginia, but made his way to CBS News as a hard-hitting political reporter. His no-frills style was exhibited as the host of the groundbreaking 1971 documentary “The Sale of the Pentagon,” which exposed public relations operations at the US Department of Defense to convince Americans to support military conflict.
Mudd’s best-known moment was during an interview with then-presidential candidate Edward Kennedy, asking him in 1979, “Why do you want to be president?” Kennedy’s difficulty in answering the question is widely seen as an inflection point in his failed campaign.
“He was a journalist of great integrity and character. He wouldn’t budge if he believed he was right and wouldn’t compromise his ethical standards,” said Susan Zirinsky, president of CBS News, who worked with Mudd in the network’s Washington office early in his career. .
After CBS passed over Mudd in favor of Dan Rather as CBS Evening News’ permanent anchor, Mudd went to NBC to co-anchor that network’s nighttime program. But the arrangement only lasted a year until Tom Brokaw became the solo anchor.
Mudd became co-moderator of “Meet the Press” and hosted occasional specials.
He joined PBS’s “MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” team in 1987, then served as the main anchor for cable’s History Channel. He helped endow the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics at Washington & Lee University as his alma mater.
“Roger loved and collected books, read good old-fashioned, two-sided newspapers every morning of his life, and watched the evening news as much as he could handle,” his family said in a written statement.
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