Fred Patterson Graham (October 6, 1931 – December 28, 2019) was an American legal affairs journalist, television news anchor, and attorney.[1][2] He was the chief anchor and managing editor of the former Court TV.[3] He also won a Peabody award for his work as a CBS law correspondent.
Early life
Graham was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of Otis and Lois Patterson Graham.[1][2] His father was a Presbyterian minister.[1]
From 1960 to 1963, Graham went into private practice with the firm of Trabue, Sturdivant and Harbison in Nashville, Tennessee.[2] In January 1963, he moved to Washington D.C. to serve as the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments.[2] In October 1963, he then worked as a special assistant to Secretary of LaborW. Willard Wirtz.[2]
In February 1965, he was the first attorney hired to be a Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, working there until 1972.[1][2] In addition to the Supreme Court, he covered the Justice Department in an era of racial tensions and violence.[1]
He was a legal correspondent for CBS News from 1972 to 1987, covering the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, and the legal profession.[2] In this capacity, he covered the Watergate scandal, President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, and abortion rights.[1] He also had a weekly radio show, The Law and You, and was a substitute anchor for CBS Morning News, Face the Nation, and Nightwatch.[2] He received a Peabody Award in 1974 for his coverage of Watergate.[5][1]
However, as television news became film focused, his airtime was reduced because cameras were not allowed in the courtroom.[1] In 1987, he was laid off from CBS during a period of staff reduction.[1] Graham found a new position as a local news anchor of WKRN-TV, the ABC affiliate in Nashville, for two years.[1] During this time he wrote Happy Talk: Confessions of a TV Newsman which was published in 1990.[1] In this memoir of his twenty years as a broadcast journalist, he stated that network news had become “infotainment, the equivalent of a well-produced video version of a tabloid.”[1]
In 1991, cameras were allowed in the courtroom for criminal trials. Graham was hired as the managing editor, chief anchor, and one of the first four anchors of Court TV, the nickname for the new Courtroom Television Network.[1][3] Graham said, "It is unlike anything I've done before, but this is a very exciting project. It probably will become a fixture as an important part of both broadcasting and the legal scene."[3] He is most known for his coverage of the O. J. Simpson murder case.[1] He became Court TV's managing editor.[1] Graham retired in 2008, when Court TV became TruTV and changed its focus.[1]
The Due Process Revolution: The Warren Court's Impact on Criminal Law. Hayden Book Company, 1970.
Journals
"Politics, the Constitution, and the Warren Court." with Arthur Selwyn Miller, Philip B. Kurland, and Stephen L. Wasby. Columbia Law Review. 2006; 71: 502.[8]
Personal life
He married Sheila Lucile McCrea in 1961.[1] They had three children before divorcing in 1982.[1] He married Skila Harris in 1982.[1][4]
In 2019, he died at 88 in Washington, D.C., from complications of Parkinson’s Disease.[1][2]
^ abcde"Fred P. Graham, stalwart chronicler of legal news, dies at 88." Washingtonpost.com, 31 Dec. 2019. via Gale Academic OneFile, accessed May 25, 2022.
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