At 6:10 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, Fox News Channel broke the sad news that Pulitzer Prize-winning author and longtime commentator for the network, Dr. Charles Krauthammer passed away at the age of 68 from terminal cancer.
It didn’t take long for condolences to come pouring in from people across the political spectrum and throughout the media. Even with such short notice, both CBS and NBC ran news briefs on their evening programs reporting his passing. But ABC was the lone broadcast network to skip Krauthammer’s passing. And The Washington Post, where he wrote for decades, published an obituary that partially blamed him for the Iraq War.
For CBS Evening News brief on Krauthammer’s passing, anchor Jeff Glor focused on some of his many achievements and even included the conservative commentator’s thoughts on his life:
Charles Krauthammer, a powerful conservative voice died today of cancer. The Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor was a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Harvard trained psychiatrist. A spinal cord injury in his 20s left him paralyzed. Earlier this month, Krauthammer posted a farewell letter writing, "I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended." Charles Krauthammer was 68 years old.
“The Washington Post where he wrote a column for decades, tonight, called him an intellectual provocateur he was also a familiar presence on Fox News,” reported anchor Lester Holt during NBC Nightly News. “Krauthammer was paralyzed below the neck in a diving accident as a young man, but went on to graduate from Harvard and practiced psychiatry.”
Instead of reporting on Krauthammer’s passing, ABC reported on the Kate Spade’s father passing before her funeral.
Meanwhile, at The Post, the paper’s obituary editor, Adam Bernstein found that Krauthammer’s life could be boiled down to his position on the Iraq War. “Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist and intellectual provocateur who championed the muscular foreign policy of neoconservatism that helped lay the ideological groundwork for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, died June 21 at 68,” he BEGAN the paper’s remembrance, setting the tone.
“He was festooned with honors by right-leaning groups and sought after by Republican policymakers,” Bernstein continued. “To the left, Dr. Krauthammer was a bogeyman, most notably on the matter of President George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’ and the ultimately catastrophic efforts to democratize the Middle East.”
Bernstein tried to place the war dead at Krauthammer’s feet, saying:
The U.S.-led invasion, which Dr. Krauthammer billed at the outset as a “Three Week War,” has dragged on ever since, caused more than 4,000 U.S. deaths and more than 100,000 Iraqi casualties amid a grinding insurgency, and left the United States mired in a failed state with hostile neighbors.
The Post also appeared to scoff at Krauthammer’s views towards how the Democrats who tried to exploit mass shootings:
After mass shootings, Dr. Krauthammer argued, Democratic leaders made “totally sincere, totally knee-jerk and totally pointless” calls for stricter gun-safety laws instead of addressing what he regarded as the more relevant underlying issue: the failure of families and the state to ensure effective psychiatric intervention for those who need it.
Dr. Charles Krauthammer was a prolific intellectual and he will be missed by many.
The transcripts are below:
CBS Evening News
June 21, 2018
6:52:23 PM EasternJEFF GLOR: Charles Krauthammer, a powerful conservative voice died today of cancer. The Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor was a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Harvard trained psychiatrist. A spinal cord injury in his 20s left him paralyzed. Earlier this month, Krauthammer posted a farewell letter writing, "I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended." Charles Krauthammer was 68 years old.
NBC Nightly News
June 21, 2018
7:14:18 PM EasternLESTER HOLT: There is late word tonight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer has died. The Washington Post where he wrote a column for decades, tonight, called him an intellectual provocateur he was also a familiar presence on Fox News. Krauthammer was paralyzed below the neck in a diving accident as a young man, but went on to graduate from Harvard and practiced psychiatry. He disclosed publicly, just weeks ago, a terminal cancer diagnosis. Charles Krauthammer was 68 years old.
