Eric Engberg Dies: Longtime CBS News Correspondent Was 74

by Lisa de Moraes
March 28, 2016 4:26pm

Eric Engberg, a former political and investigative reporter for CBS News who also covered overseas conflicts and won electronic journalism’s top honor for a report identifying a Vietnam veteran buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns, has died. He was 74. Engberg died Sunday in his sleep at his home in Palmetto, FL, where he retired.

“One of the best television correspondents of his generation,” former longtime CBS newsman Dan Rather said today. He called Engberg “tough but fair, and that rarity: a hard-nosed reporter with a sense of humor.”

Engberg made news last year from retirement. In February 2015, questions arose about Bill O’Reilly’s claim of reporting from a dangerous war zone during the Falklands War in 1982. Engberg had been with O’Reilly, then a CBS News correspondent, and other reporters who were prevented from reaching the front and were contained in Buenos Aires, where there was street violence. “It was not a war zone or even close. It was an ‘expense account zone,'” Engberg said of O’Reilly’s time in the Argentine capital covering the war. O’Reilly blasted back, calling Engberg “Room Service Eric”; Engberg responded with a video.