Printable Biography of Bernard Kalb

Bernard Kalb is a veteran journalist, media critic and author. He was the founding anchor and a panelist on the weekly CNN program Reliable Sources for a decade.

From Moscow to Peking, from Antarctica to Saigon, from Jerusalem on the “diplomatic shuttle” to other Middle East capitals, Bernard Kalb has traveled the globe for more than three decades as a correspondent covering world affairs for CBS News, NBC News and The New York Times. Beyond his experience in both print and television journalism, he also has had the unique advantage of seeing the world from “the other side of the podium,” having served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and as a spokesman for the State Department for two years, until October 1986.

Kalb travels widely as a lecturer and moderator—at home and abroad — on subjects ranging from U.S. foreign policy to the media. Since 1997, he has moderated panels for The Freedom Forum, on the state of the media in countries around the world. His travels have taken him across the globe including New Delhi for a U.S.-India media conference and as a correspondent for a PBS television documentary on India; Rio for a television documentary on the Earth Summit; Moscow for a conference that included a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev just days before his resignation; Bali for The Asia Society to moderate a panel on global economy; Budapest for The International Media Fund’s seminar on government-press relations; and Istanbul for the World Business Council.

Over the years, Kalb’s assignments have placed him in the midst of major news stories. As State Department spokesman, he was with the U.S. delegation when President Reagan held his first summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva in November 1985. As a television correspondent, he accompanied President Nixon on the opening trip to China in 1972 and traveled with President and Secretaries dating back to Nixon and Kissinger on their diplomatic journeys. He has spent a decade and a half as a foreign correspondent based in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Paris and Saigon.

Kalb was the correspondent for Global Rivals, a four-part series on US-Soviet relations broadcast on PBS. In 1990, he moderated a live TV program, originating in Manila and transmitted via satellite throughout Asia, linking leaders of five Asian countries.

His credentials as a journalist were recognized by the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University as it named him a Senior Fellow for the year 1991-1992. His career has won him a Council of Foreign Relations fellowship and the Overseas Press Club Award for his CBS television documentary, Viet Cong, based on his many years of reporting the war in Vietnam.

He is co-author, with his brother Marvin Kalb, of two books: Kissinger, and The Last Ambassador, a novel about the collapse of Saigon in 1975.

Kalb has written for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The Smithsonian, and Newsweek on subjects ranging from foreign affairs to the collecting of Chinese porcelain and antiques.

He was appointed by the State Department to the U.S. delegation of the Anti-Incitement Committee associated with the Middle East peace process. The trilateral committee aims to find ways of preventing incitement to violence or hatred between Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr. Kalb delights audiences as a lively, witty and humorous critic on the media.

He travels from Washington, DC.