Another veteran newsman took the exit. Bill Monroe died yesterday, Thursday, at a Washington-area nursing home. He was ninety years old. For ten years in the mid 1970s and early 1980s, he was the host of the NBC News Sunday talk show Meet the Press. Before that, he worked on the NBC Today Show. I remember watching him on both shows.
Mr. Monroe was one of those plain speaking, plain looking journalists, who, when either reporting on the news or interviewing news makers, came across as a person who was not easily snowed, and as one who wouldn't let a news maker try to get away with trying to snow the audience.
From the Associated Press -- Bill Monroe, "on his first day as the show's permanent moderator of (Meet The Press) interviewed Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, the staunch segregationist who was at the time running for President. "Have you personally changed your views about segregation?," Monroe asked.When Wallace didn't respond directly, Monroe cut him off and repeated the question. Wallace began to stumble through his next response, and Monroe asked a third time: "Have your views changed?"
Wallace finally claimed that race relations were better in Alabama than other parts of the country.
Bill Monroe, R.I.P.
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