March 28, 2024

John Palmer, 77, Correspondent for NBC News

The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, his wife, Nancy, said.

Mr. Palmer worked for NBC from 1962 to 1990, and then returned to the network from 1994 to 2002. He was news anchor on “Today” during the run of Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel as co-hosts, when the program often led in the ratings.

In the 1970s, Mr. Palmer was based in Beirut and covered the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the war in Cyprus and the civil war in Angola. He was later a correspondent in Paris and at the White House.

In April 1980 he broke the news of the Carter administration’s failed effort to rescue the American hostages in Iran. Eight American servicemen died when a helicopter crashed into a C-130 transport plane at a staging area in Iran.

He received the Merriman Smith Award for excellence in presidential news coverage, the first broadcast journalist to do so.

In 1986, Mr. Palmer was the anchor for the first hours of NBC’s coverage of the Challenger space shuttle explosion.

He left the network in 1990 to anchor a syndicated news program, “Instant Recall,” interviewing prominent people like the former presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan as well as Jonas Salk and Chuck Yeager. He was also the host of the weekly “Discovery Journal” on the Discovery Channel and anchored a daily newscast on the television channel of The Christian Science Monitor.

NBC hired him again in 1994 to be a national correspondent.

John Spencer Palmer was born Sept. 10, 1935, in Kingsport, Tenn. He was a graduate of Northwestern University and held a master’s degree from Columbia University. After leaving NBC he was a host on Retirement Living TV.

Besides his wife, survivors include three daughters.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/business/media/john-palmer-longtime-nbc-news-correspondent-dies-at-77.html?partner=rss&emc=rss