NBC News’ Tom Brokaw to Retire — Watch Highlights from Veteran Anchor’s Career

Longtime NBC News anchor and senior correspondent Tom Brokaw will retire after 55 years at the network, NBC announced Friday.

Brokaw, 80, spent his entire journalism career with NBC News, beginning in the Los Angeles Bureau where he covered Ronald Reagan’s first run for public office, as well as the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, and the 1968 presidential campaign. In 1973, he moved to the nation’s capital as the NBC News White House correspondent during the Watergate scandal, a position he held until 1976 when he started co-hosting “TODAY.” In 1983, he became the anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw,” leading the team there for 22 years. He also served as moderator of “Meet the Press” following the death of Tim Russert. Brokaw became a part of NBC News’ special events coverage after he moved on from anchoring “NBC Nightly News.”

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Brokaw won a number of prestigious journalism awards throughout his career, including Peabodys, Duponts, Emmys and The Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcasting. Brokaw was awarded the Medal of Freedom by former president Barack Obama in 2014.

“During one of the most complex and consequential eras in American history, a new generation of NBC News journalists, producers and technicians is providing America with timely, insightful and critically important information, 24/7. I could not be more proud of them,” Brokaw said in a statement about his retirement.

NBC News stated that Brokaw will continue to be active in print journalism, will continue to author books and articles, and spend time with his wife, Meredith, three daughters, and grandchildren. The news organization stated that Brokaw was the only journalist to helm “Today,” “NBC Nightly News,” and “Meet the Press.”

Brokaw covered a variety of pivotal television news events during his tenure at NBC News, including live reporting of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as well as coverage of Princess Diana’s death in 1997. He also interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, marking the first one-on-one interview between an American journalist and the last leader of the Soviet Union. Several highlights of Brokaw’s career can be viewed below:

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