The reporter who held presidents to account
Bill Plante 1938–2022
Bill Plante was known as a shouter. CBS News’ senior White House correspondent under Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, he often grew exasperated with presidents and their press secretaries who deflected questions. He believed shouting was a critical part of the job of a White House correspondent—even if it made him appear rude. But it got the job done: Over his 52-year career, he won multiple Emmy Awards, anchored the CBS Sunday Night News, and covered the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and 13 presidential elections. Without yelling, he said, journalists would “be walking away from our First Amendment role—and then we really would be the shills we’re so often accused of being.”
Plante was born in Chicago to a mother who worked as a school administrator and a father who was in sales and marketing. He studied humanities at Loyola University, where he reported for a local radio station. After graduating, he spent four years as an assistant news director for Milwaukee’s CBS affiliate. In 1963, he won a CBS fellowship to study at Columbia University, and officially joined CBS News the following year. He soon began reporting from Vietnam, where he remained off and on until the fall of Saigon in 1975. While in the U.S., he reported on the civil rights movement, interviewing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the march from Selma to Montgomery. In his 35 years reporting on American presidents, he wasn’t afraid to offend people in power and “had a clear-eyed view of what it meant to be a White House correspondent,” said The New York Times.
But “when he wasn’t covering the White House, Plante was usually talking about fine wine,” said CBSNews.com. His cellar was thought to be one of the best in Washington, D.C., and he occasionally reported on the subject for CBS. He retired in 2016, “having become in his own right one of the most visible newsmen on television,” said The Washington Post. “It was always interesting—never fail—and in many ways the same every time,” he said of covering presidents. “They’re different people, but they make the same mistakes; they get into the same kind of jams. And you say, ‘Hey, I’ve seen this before.’”