Fred Graham (correspondent)
Fred Patterson Graham (October 6, 1931 – December 28, 2019) was an American legal affairs journalist, television news anchor, and attorney. He was the chief anchor and managing editor of the former Court TV. 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. His father was a Presbyterian minister. He went to a two-room school in Texarkana, Arkansas where his classmate was Ross Perot. Then, the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee for his father's work. He graduated from West End High School in Nashville in 1949. He attended Yale University on an academic scholarship, receiving a B.A. in 1953. There, he was a member of the fraternity St. Anthony Hall. Graham was in the infantry and was an intelligence officer of the United States Marine Corps from 1953 to 1956. He served in both Korea and Japan. He then attended Vanderbilt University Law School, receiving an LL.B. in 1959. There, he became a member of the Order of the Coif and was the managing editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. As a Fulbright Scholar, he attended Oxford University and earned a Diploma of Law in 1960. Career From 1960 to 1963, Graham went into private practice with the firm of Trabue, Sturdivant and Harbison in Nashville, Tennessee. In January 1963, he moved to Washington D.C. to serve as the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments. In October 1963, he then worked as a special assistant to Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz. In February 1965, he was the first attorney hired to be a Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, working there until 1972. In addition to the Supreme Court, he covered the Justice Department in an era of racial tensions and violence. 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. In this capacity, he covered the Watergate scandal, President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, and abortion rights. 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. He received a Peabody Award in 1974 for his coverage of Watergate. However, as television news became film focused, his airtime was reduced because cameras were not allowed in the courtroom. In 1987, he was laid off from CBS during a period of staff reduction. Graham found a new position as a local news anchor of WKRN-TV, the ABC affiliate in Nashville, for two years. During this time he wrote Happy Talk: Confessions of a TV Newsman which was published in 1990. 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.” In 1991, cameras were allowed in the courtroom for criminal trials.