Broadcast news pioneer dead at 87

<br>WASHINGTON (AP)_ Howard K. Smith, whose career as a newscaster ranged from World War II as one of ``Murrow's Boys'' at CBS to roles as co-anchor and analyst for ABC, is dead at age 87.

Monday, February 18th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP)_ Howard K. Smith, whose career as a newscaster ranged from World War II as one of ``Murrow's Boys'' at CBS to roles as co-anchor and analyst for ABC, is dead at age 87.

Smith died of pneumonia aggravated by congestive heart failure on Friday evening at his home in Bethesda, Md., his son, Jack, said Monday.

Although out of the public eye for nearly a quarter-century, Smith was a broadcasting pioneer and, from television's infancy, a presence on the air.

Along the way, he made at least two appearances of lasting impact even beyond the journalistic.

In 1960, he served as the moderator of the first Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate, a seminal TV event generally thought to have played a decisive role in Kennedy's election.

Smith also is memorialized in Robert Altman's 1975 political satire ``Nashville,'' in which Smith portrayed himself as a broadcast commentator covering the presidential campaign of the never-glimpsed candidate Hal Phillip Walker.

Howard Kingsbury Smith was born May 12, 1914, in Ferriday, La., and, after attending Tulane University, began his years as a foreign correspondent working for United Press in Copenhagen and Berlin.

In 1941 he joined CBS News as a member of the team assembled by the legendary Edward R. Murrow during World War II, and in 1946 succeeded Murrow as CBS's London correspondent. He covered Europe and the Middle East for CBS until 1957, when he came to Washington, D.C., as a correspondent and commentator on the network's nightly TV newscast.