Veteran Newsman, PBS Host Paul Duke Dies

WASHINGTON - Paul Duke, whose storytelling skills and journalistic evenhandedness set the tone for the venerable public television show "Washington Week in Review," has died of leukemia, his former employer WETA-TV said Tuesday. He was 78.

Duke died Monday at his home.

He was already a political news veteran — having worked for The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and NBC — in 1974 when he began his two-decade stint as the show's moderator.

Now called "Washington Week," the Friday night program featuring journalists discussing the week's news is the Public Broadcasting Service's longest running news program.

In a recent essay in Television Quarterly, Duke dubbed it "the granddaddy of television's informal, conversational news discussion programs."

He also expressed his disdain for the direction news has taken, particularly cable channel talk shows. "More than ever, the cable landscape is populated with confrontational gabfests, zealous ideologues oozing with know-it-all righteousness about the latest controversies of the day," Duke wrote.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050719/ap_en_tv/obit_duke