Journalists

Talent Name
Richard Schlesinger

Richard Schlesinger is a correspondent for 48 HOURS and contributes to the CBS EVENING NEWS and other broadcasts.

He previously served as a full-time correspondent for 48 HOURS (1990-1997), reporting on a wide range of topics, including innocent Americans behind bars, marriage and divorce in the 1990s and the middle-class recession. He was the sole reporter for 48 HOURS: “Death by Midnight,” an in-depth profile of one convict facing the death penalty and for 48 HOURS: “Searching for a Cure,” an unprecedented look at an experiment for a potentially groundbreaking new AIDS treatment.

Schlesinger was the reporter for “CBS Reports: “Enter the Jury Room,” for which he won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. The two-hour 1997 documentary, anchored by Ed Bradley, examined the American jury system and marked the first time network television cameras were given access to actual jury deliberations.

Schlesinger is the recipient of nine Emmy Awards.

He joined CBS News in 1984 as a reporter in its Miami bureau and covered stories throughout the southeastern United States and South America before becoming a correspondent in the CBS News northeast bureau (1987-1990). He also served as an investigative reporter for the CBS EVENING NEWS and has been a substitute anchor for both morning news and weekend editions of the CBS EVENING NEWS.

Before joining CBS News, Schlesinger was the Washington bureau chief for the Post-Newsweek television stations (1980-1984). He had previously been a political reporter for WPLG-TV Miami (1976-1980), where he won a Sigma Delta Chi Award.

He was born in New York and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1976 with a degree in journalism.