PERSON: Steve Kroft

Reporter

Born August 22, 1945, in Kokomo, Indiana. Steve Kroft’s father, Fred Kroft, was a metallurgist who worked for the Union Carbide Corporation, a prominent chemicals company. Kroft’s father was also an enthusiastic and talented golfer who had starred on Purdue University’s golf team, and the sport became Steve’s childhood obsession.

Kroft played on the golf team at Kokomo High School and, upon graduating in 1963, he enrolled at Syracuse University, where he also played the sport competitively. While at Syracuse, Kroft also developed a new passion — journalism. Kroft began studying the subject at the famed journalism department of Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

After graduating with his bachelor’s of science in 1967, Kroft was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Vietnam War. He was assigned to the information office of the 25th Infantry Division, where his tasks included escorting television crews while they documented the front-lines.

After leaving the army in 1971, Kroft returned to Syracuse, New York, where he worked for local television news station WSYR-TV. After several years in that job, Kroft decided to return to school for further journalism training. He attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and graduated with a master’s degree in 1975.

After graduating from Columbia, Kroft moved to Florida, where he worked as a reporter for two prominent local news channels: Miami’s WPLG-TV and Jacksonville’s WJXT-TV.

Then in 1980, Kroft landed his first job at a major American television network, working for the northeast news bureau at CBS in New York. After only a year with CBS, Kroft was named a correspondent and moved to the Dallas bureau, where he worked for two years. Three years later, Kroft won a promotion as foreign correspondent for the network’s London bureau. There he immediately rose to prominence within the journalism world, winning an Emmy Award for his coverage of the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Other prominent news stories Kroft covered during this period include the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in Beirut; the Lebanese Civil War; and the sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. In 1987, Kroft shifted roles once again to work alongside Meredith Vieira on the newsmagazine series West 57th.

— biography.com