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Obituaries

Joseph Wershba | CBS producer, reporter , 90

Joseph Wershba, 90, a CBS News producer and reporter whose work for Edward R. Murrow on the See It Now segment about Sen. Joseph McCarthy helped end the 1950s communist witch-hunt, died Saturday of complications from pneumonia on Long Island, N.Y., where he lived.

    Inquirer
    Published 

Joseph Wershba, 90, a CBS News producer and reporter whose work for Edward R. Murrow on the

See It Now

segment about Sen. Joseph McCarthy helped end the 1950s communist witch-hunt, died Saturday of complications from pneumonia on Long Island, N.Y., where he lived.

He was one of the six original 60 Minutes producers.

Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and executive producer of 60 Minutes, said: "Almost everything he touched became part of the foundation for CBS News, including 60 Minutes."

After attending Brooklyn College and serving in the Army during World War II, he joined CBS News in 1944 as a radio news writer. Four years later, he was sent to CBS's Washington bureau as a radio correspondent, where he worked on the groundbreaking Hear It Now series, the radio precursor to See It Now. While in Washington, he also worked on-air with Walter Cronkite in early TV news at the network's local station.

At See It Now, Mr. Wershba worked on the pivotal 1954 expose on McCarthy. It became the centerpiece of the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck. Robert Downey Jr. played Mr. Wershba in that Oscar-nominated film about Murrow and his CBS News team's joust with the powerful Wisconsin senator.

From 1958 to 1964, he was a columnist and feature writer for the New York Post.

He then returned to CBS News, where he produced documentaries for CBS Reports and was chosen to be one of the original group of producers for 60 Minutes. He won two Emmys and retired from CBS News in 1988. - AP

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