Veteran Network News Exec Gordon Manning Dead At 89
Former network news executive Gordon Manning, credited with instigating Walter Cronkite's 14-minute report on Watergate in 1972 and landing Mikhail Gorbachev for his first interview on U.S. television, died Wednesday in Westport, CT of a heart attack at age 89. He had held the position of vice president at both CBS News and NBC News. An A.P. obituary Thursday cited a 1988 New York profile which quoted Steve Friedman, the former producer of Today and The Early Show, as saying, "Is there anybody who doesn't like him? Yeah - the same people who think of television news as a business. Gordon thinks of it as an adventure."
