Tom Brokaw: Top moments from legendary broadcaster’s career

The 80-year-old journalist is retiring from the airwaves after 55 years at NBC

Tom Brokaw, NBC anchor and author, speaks at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for WS Productions)

The legendary newsman Tom Brokaw has announced his retirement from the airwaves after a historic 55 years with NBC.

The 80-year-old journalist’s career started in 1966, covering Ronald Reagan’s first run for office and spanned the Watergate scandal in 1974, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and 9/11 in 2001.

The foreign correspondent is best known for having anchored the "NBC Nightly News" from 1982 through 2004, before becoming a special correspondent and political analyst.

He remains the only anchor to have hosted all three major of the network’s programmes, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News and Meet The Press.

In 2014 he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, who called him  “one of the nation’s greatest journalists” who “has helped Americans better understand the world and each other.”

Born in 1940 in Webster, South Dakota, he is also known for his 2001 book, The Greatest Generation, on those who lived during the Great Depression and Second World War.

NBC said in a statement that he intends to remain active in print as well as well as spending more time with his wife of 59-years, Meredith, their three daughters and grandchildren.

Here are some of his most memorable moments.

The Watergate scandal in 1974

Mr Brokaw, then 34, was still in the early stages of his career as NBC’s White House correspondent when the Watergate scandal broke, leading to Richard Nixon becoming the first president to resign. In his 2019 book, The Fall of Richard Nixon, he recalled: “The fundamental rule of law prevailed in America.”

First interview with Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in 1987:

The journalist claimed that he won the much-coveted first US interview with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for NBC ''the old-fashioned way: we earned it.''

In a story published in the New York Times shortly after the sit-down, he said that the team ran an “orchestrated campaign” to become the first US network to talk to the then 56-year-old, writing letters and making phone-calls to contacts every 5-6 weeks for two years.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

The then 49-year-old Brokaw was in Berlin on November 9, 1989, when the wall separating east and west Germany came down.

In archive NBC footage he was captured asking the then east German propaganda minister whether the border would come down, and he replied that it would, leading to an immediate flood of thousands of individuals into the west.

On the 30th anniversary he returned to the city and recalled: “Looking back it’s sometimes hard to believe it happened at all.”

Sneaking cameras into Tiananmen Square in 1989

In an NBC flashback, he explained how he flew into Beijing shortly after the massacre and hid a camera in the back of his cameraman’s bicycle in order to avoid detection by Chinese police.

“I did not know if I was going to get shot or if we were going to pull this off or not”, he said.

Together they brought back some of the first images of the square after the alleged, and much disputed by the Chinese government, deaths of thousands of protestors.

Covering 9/11 in 2001

The anchor was on air on September 11, 2001, when the planes hit the World Trade Center, remaining on air for around a week afterwards.

Speaking in 2013 he said it “took everything I knew as a human being, as a father, as a husband, as a journalist and as someone who at that stage stage in his life was 61-years-old. I’d seen a lot and all those experiences came into play.”

Cancer diagnosis in 2013

He opened up in 2013 about his diagnosis with multiple myeloma, a treatable but ultimately incurable blood cancer.

Mr Brokaw, who has been in remission for several years, was praised for his unflinching interviews where he shone a light on the need for early diagnosis and symptoms.

Presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014

Presenting the highest civilian honour to the then 74-year-old, President Obama said: “He’s covered every presidential election since 1968. We’ve welcomed him into our home, at dinner time, Sunday mornings, we trusted him to tell us what we needed to know and to ask questions that needed asking. I know because I’ve been on the receiving end of some of those questions.

Mr Brokaw said at the time: “I was stunned. It was an emotional moment for me.”