Sander Vanocur

A respected figure in television news for more than three decades, journalist and reporter Sander Vanocur covered the White House and its occupants from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton for both NBC and ABC, and was a panelist at the first televised presidential debate in 1960. Born Alexander Vinocur in Cleveland, Ohio on January 8, 1928, he was the son of lawyer Louis Vinocur and his wife, Rose, who divorced in 1941; she gained custody of Vanocur and his sister, Roberta, and after changing the spelling of their last name - a gesture, according to Vanocur, made to anger her ex-husband - raised them in Illinois. There, he graduated from the Western Military Academy in 1946 and earned a degree in communications from Northwestern University before continuing his studies at the London School of Economics from 1951 to 1952. Vanocur then served in the U.S. Army in Europe for two years before returning to England, where he served as a reporter for the Guardian and freelanced for CBS News. At the recommendation of CBS's Eric Sevareid, among others, he was hired by the New York Times in 1955, but left in 1957 to join the Washington desk at NBC News. While covering the 1960 presidential primary in Wisconsin, he became acquainted with Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy and his family, and would serve as one of the four journalists who questioned Kennedy and his Republican opponent, then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon, in the first televised presidential debut in 1960. From there, Vanocur would serve as NBC's White House correspondent after Kennedy's election, and enjoyed what appeared to be unparalleled access to the president and his family, which generated not only suggestions of unprofessional closeness with the Kennedys from competitors, but also the apparent enmity of Nixon, who reportedly helped to drive Vanocur out of a job reporting on the 1972 presidential campaign for PBS by pressuring the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease funding for news and commentary on public television. Vanocur's tenure with NBC News lasted until 1971, and would encompass some of the final interviews with Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., before their assassinations in 1968; he also served as its weekend news anchor during this period and hosted a monthly news magazine program, "First Tuesday" (NBC, 1969-1973). But he departed the network in 1971 after being passed over for its lead news anchor, and after his brief stint with PBS, worked as a television columnist for the Washington Post until returning to television news at the behest of ABC News and Sports president Roone Arledge, who charged Vanocur with creating a special investigative news unit in Washington. The unit would help to make ABC News the ratings leader during the 1970s, and Vanocur, who would serve as a vice president of the network's news division, was among its most prominent faces, serving as chief overview correspondent for both the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, and as moderator for the vice presidential debate between George H.W. Bush and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. After leaving ABC in 1991, he continued to remain at the center of major political events for the network, serving as panelist at a 1992 presidential debut between then-Governor Bill Clinton and businessman H. Ross Perot. In later years, Vanocur taught at Duke University and hosted programs for the History Channel; after a long struggle with dementia, the 91-year-old Vanocur died on September 16, 2019 at a hospice facility in Santa Barbara, California.