Watch CBS News

Bob Simon, '60 Minutes' Correspondent And CBS News Veteran, Dies In West Side Highway Crash

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Bob Simon, a longtime correspondent for CBS' "60 Minutes" and a CBS News veteran of more than 45 years, was killed Wednesday night in a crash on the West Side Highway.

"60 Minutes" confirmed Simon's death Wednesday night.

CBS2 sources said Simon was in the back seat of a livery cab that lost control as it headed south on the highway. The driver struck a Mercedes, and then struck the middle barrier of the highway, sources said.

The driver of the livery cab was also transported to hospital with non-life threatening injuries, sources said. The driver of the Mercedes was uninjured.

Simon was extricated from the vehicle and was taken to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital where he died, sources said.

Simon had contributed regularly to "60 Minutes" since 1996. His last piece on "60 Minutes" this past weekend was on the Academy Award-nominated film "Selma."

He also reported recently on such stories as the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt's political turmoil, and the situation in Fukushima, Japan, three years after it endured the triple tragedy of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster

Simon received numerous awards for his reporting. His 2012 story for from Central Africa on the world's only all-black symphony won him his fourth Peabody award and an Emmy, CBS News recalled. A 2013 story about an orchestra in Paraguay, one whose poor members constructed their instruments from trash, won him his 27th Emmy.

Simon's foreign coverage has appeared on all CBS News broadcasts, and has earned him other major awards — including the Overseas Press Club's highest honor for a body of work, the President's Award. His 27 Emmys may be the most held by a journalist for field reporting, CBS News reported.

Simon won electronic journalism's highest honor, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, for "Shame of Srebrenica," a report on the old 60 Minutes II program on heinous acts of genocide during the Bosnian War.

Few journalists covered as many overseas conflicts as Simon did, and CBS News noted that he has paid the price.

"In addition to several short detentions, close calls and wounds, he was captured by Iraqi forces near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border during the opening days of the Gulf War in January 1991. He and the other three members of CBS News' coverage team spent 40 days in Iraqi prisons, an experience Simon wrote about in his book "Forty Days" (Putnam, 1992)," CBS News recalled. "He went to Baghdad again in January 1993 to cover the American bombing of Iraq."

Simon's career in war reporting began in Vietnam. He was based in London from 1972 to 1977, and in Saigon from 1971 to 1972, and won an Overseas Press Club Award for his reporting on the 1972 spring offensive in Hanoi. He was also part of the CBS News team that won an Overseas Press Club award for Best Radio Spot News for coverage at the end of the conflict in 1975.

In his first tour at the CBS News London Bureau from 1969 to 1971, Simon reported extensively on the troubles in Northern Ireland. He has also reported from war zones in Portugal, Cyprus, The Falklands, the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia and from the American interventions in Grenada, Somalia and Haiti, CBS News reported.

He was in Poland during martial law, with Israeli troops during the Yom Kippur War, with PLO fighters during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and in Gaza the day the First Intifada began, CBS News reported.

Simon has also served in a CBS News national correspondent in New York from 1982 to 1987, and as the State Department correspondent for CBS News in Washington from 1981 to 1982. He was also assigned to the CBS News Tel Aviv bureau from 1977 to 1981.

Simon joined CBS News in 1967 as a New York-based reporter and assignment editor. He covered campus unrest and inner-city riots, as well as the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

Before joining CBS News, Simon was an American Foreign Service officer from 1964 to 1967. He was also a Fulbright scholar in France and a Woodrow Wilson scholar.

Simon was born May 21, 1941 in the Bronx. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in 1962 with a degree in history.

 
TM and © Copyright 2015 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2015 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.