Award-Winning CBS Newsman Harold Dow Dies at 62
Dow helped create 48 Hours and landed several exclusive interviews.
Harold Dow, an Emmy-winning correspondent for CBS News who helped shape the nonfiction program 48 Hours and covered the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, died in New Jersey on August 21, 2010. He was 62, and lived in Hackensack
Dow, who spent four decades with CBS and its affiliates, had been a correspondent for 48 Hours since 1990. He also reported for CBS Evening News With Dan Rather and CBS News’ Sunday Morning.
Dow earned numerous awards during his career, including five Emmys and a George Foster Peabody Award. Stories of particular note included coverage of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and of American troops’ movement into Bosnia in 1996.
In 1976, Dow secured an exclusive interview with kidnapping victim Patricia Hearst, and he had the first network interview with O.J. Simpson after the 1994 killing of the former football star’s ex-wife. According to CBS’ remarks upon his death, Dow barely escaped one of the falling World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.
Dow was a contributor to 48 Hours on Crack Street, the 1986 documentary that led to the creation of the weekly 48 Hours. Before that, he had been a co-anchor on CBS News’ Nightwatch and a correspondent and reporter at the CBS News Los Angeles bureau. He started his career with the network as a broadcast associate in 1972.
As a co-anchor and talk show host for KETV in Omaha, he was the first African American television reporter in that city.
He is survived by his wife and their three children.