List Detail
William Plante '55
CBS News White House Correspondent
March 2015
March 2015
William “Bill” Plante ’55 celebrated 50 years at CBS News last June. Serving as the network’s Senior White House correspondent, Bill’s prolific career spans the Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. He is an Emmy-winning journalist who has documented the civil rights movement of the sixties; the war in Vietnam; the Reagan-Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik, Iceland; the Gulf War; and every presidential campaign since 1968.
Bill anchored the CBS Sunday Night News from 1988 to 1995, and his news coverage is frequently seen on CBS This Morning and the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. During the Obama administration, Plante covered the President’s trip to Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia and Korea.
Earlier this month, Bill returned to Selma, Alabama, where, as a 27-year-old reporter with just one year on the job, he covered the historic civil rights marches led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery 50 years ago.
In a recent interview with CNN, Plante was attributed with the awakening of a nation and world with his coverage of the events in Selma. “Did you ever think at that time that your reporting of this story would also contribute to helping to change a nation? To helping promote a change of law? A way of thinking?” the interviewer asks. “I think what we gathered was by making it public and making people aware, that probably some things would change,” reflects Bill. “And they did.”
It was only one week after coverage broke of the events of Bloody Sunday in Selma that President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a Voting Rights Act, declaring, “We shall overcome,” on television in front of Congress.
Exploring and exposing issues of social justice have long been a focus of Bill’s work. In April 2004, he delivered the keynote address to students Loyola Academy during Justice and Peace Week. He shared his thoughts on the media’s ability to help or hinder the quest for justice and peace on a global scale, urging students to always be informed consumers of the media.
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