Bernard Shaw

American journalist and lead news anchor for CNN from 1980 until his retirement on 2 March 2001. Prior to his time at CNN, he was a reporter and anchor for WNUS and Westinghouse Broadcasting (1964-1970), CBS News (1971-1977), and ABC News (1977-1980).

Shaw was born to Edgar Shaw, a railroad employee and house painter, and Camilla (Murphy) Shaw, a housekeeper. He attended the University of Illinois Chicago from 1963 to 1968. He served in the United States Marine Corps, including stints in Hawaii and at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, where in 1962 he was a "Message Center" specialist, achieving the rank of Corporal, E-4.

While co-anchor of CNN's PrimeNews broadcast, anchoring from Washington, D.C., Shaw's coverage of the 1981 assassination attempt on U.S. President Ronald Reagan (with Shaw joined by former CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr, one of the first on-air personalities hired by the fledgling cable channel) is credited as helping to establish CNN as a credible and reliable broadcast news source at an early point in the network's history.

As the leading anchor of Cable News Network, Shaw covered a variety of events that shaped the political and societal reality of the 20th century. The student revolt in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the California earthquake of 1994, death and funeral of Princess Diana in 1997, and the 2000 presidential race of the United States, were some of the news events that he reported.

Shaw was widely known for the question he posed to Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Michael Dukakis at his second presidential debate with George H. W. Bush during the 1988 election, which Shaw was moderating. Knowing that Dukakis opposed the death penalty, Shaw asked him if he would support an irrevocable death penalty for a man who hypothetically raped and murdered Dukakis's wife.