Gordon Manning

Gordon Manning
Gordon Manning
Born	May 28, 1917
Died	September 6, 2006 (aged 89)
Nationality	American

Last updated April 04, 2019

John Gordon Manning Jr. (28 May 1917 – 6 September 2006) was a news executive at CBS and NBC and a former executive editor at Newsweek. Manning is credited with arranging the first interview between Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and an American correspondent and an exclusive interview with Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn shortly after Solzhenitsyn's exile from the Soviet Union in 1974.

CBS is an American English language commercial broadcast television and radio network that is a flagship property of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major production facilities and operations in New York City and Los Angeles.

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial terrestrial television network that is a flagship property of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. The network is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, with additional major offices near Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. The network is one of the Big Three television networks. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network", in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting. It became the network's official emblem in 1979.

Newsweek is an American weekly magazine founded in 1933.

Biography

Manning was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where his parents worked in a watchmaking factory. He graduated from Boston University in 1941, having served as editor of the student newspaper in college.

New Haven is a coastal city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut, and is part of the New York metropolitan area. With a population of 129,779 as determined by the 2010 United States Census, it is the second-largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport. New Haven is the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 862,477 in 2010.

Lancaster is a city located in South Central Pennsylvania which serves as the seat of Pennsylvania's Lancaster County and one of the oldest inland towns in the United States. With a population of 59,322, it ranks eighth in population among Pennsylvania's cities. The Lancaster metropolitan area population is 507,766, making it the 101st largest metropolitan area in the U.S. and second largest in the South Central Pennsylvania area.

Boston University is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has been historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church.

Manning joined the staff of United Press in Boston. During World War II he served in the Navy.

United Press International (UPI) is an international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th century. At its peak, it had more than 6,000 media subscribers. Since the first of several sales and staff cutbacks in 1982, and the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its rival, the Associated Press, UPI has concentrated on smaller information-market niches.

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Journalism career

After the war, Manning worked in a series of menial editing jobs until he was assigned to write a feature article on New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra for Collier's magazine. The response to that feature resulted in Manning being hired as a managing editor at Collier's.

Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra was an American professional baseball catcher, who later took on the roles of manager and coach. He played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), all but the last for the New York Yankees. He was an 18-time All-Star and won 10 World Series championships as a player—more than any other player in MLB history. Berra had a career batting average of .285, while hitting 358 home runs and 1,430 runs batted in. He is one of only five players to win the American League Most Valuable Player Award three times. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.

Collier's was an American magazine, founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was initially launched as Collier's Once a Week, then changed in 1895 to Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal, and finally shortened in 1905 to simply Collier's. The magazine ceased publication with the issue dated for the week ending January 4, 1957, though a brief, failed attempt was made to revive the Collier's name with a new magazine in 2012.

When Collier's ceased publication, Manning joined the staff of Newsweek. Manning's coverage of the 1964 Alaska earthquake was noticed by Fred Friendly, then-president of CBS News, who was disappointed with the CBS staff's slow response to the disaster. Friendly hired Manning, and Manning was at CBS News until 1975, when a demotion resulting from internal politics caused him to jump to NBC News.

1964 Alaska earthquake 2nd largest earthquake in history

The 1964 Alaskan earthquake, also known as the Great Alaskan earthquake and Good Friday earthquake, occurred at 5:36 PM AKST on Good Friday, March 27. Across south-central Alaska, ground fissures, collapsing structures, and tsunamis resulting from the earthquake caused about 131 deaths.

CBS News is the news division of American television and radio service CBS. CBS News' broadcasts include the CBS Evening News, CBS This Morning, news magazine programs CBS Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes and 48 Hours, and Sunday morning political affairs program Face the Nation. CBS News Radio produces hourly newscasts for hundreds of radio stations, and also oversees CBS News podcasts like The Takeout Podcast. CBS News also operates a 24-hour digital news network called CBSN.

NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Broadcast, Cable, Sports and News, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, in turn a subsidiary of Comcast. The group's various operations report to the president of NBC News, Noah Oppenheim.

Accomplishments

While at CBS News, Manning helped direct coverage of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. He urged the network to air a two-part special report by Walter Cronkite on Watergate that brought national attention to what had been a Washington Post story.

Vietnam War 1955–1975 conflict in Vietnam

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was an undeclared war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies. The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war from some US perspectives. It lasted some 19 years with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973 following the Paris Peace Accords, and included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, resulting in all three countries becoming communist states in 1975.

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll.

When President Nixon attempted to normalize relations with mainland China, Manning tried to arrange an interview with the Chinese representative to the United Nations, Huang Hua. Huang rebuffed Manning. Manning bought all the first class seats on an Air France flight Huang was taking from Paris to New York. Manning instructed the flight attendants to serve unlimited champagne to Huang. When Manning, accompanied by Cronkite and a cameraman, approached Huang later in the flight, the ambassador provided CBS with an in-flight interview that contrasted sharply with the terse statement he made to the reporters upon arrival in New York.

Death

Manning died at Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut, aged 89. The cause of death was congestive heart failure.

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References

Bernstein, Adam. (2006, September 8). Gordon Manning; From Print to TV News Pioneer. The Washington Post, p. B6

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Gordon Manning
Born	(1917-05-28)May 28, 1917
Died	September 6, 2006(2006-09-06) (aged 89)
Nationality	American