Bill Plante
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Bill Plante (January 14, 1938- ) is a veteran journalist and correspondent for CBS News, having joined the network in 1964. He has been the senior White House correspondent for CBS since January 1993 and reports regularly on The Early Show and the CBS Evening News. He anchored CBS Sunday Night News from June 1988 to August 1995.
Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Plante graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 1959 with a bachelor's degree in humanities. He went on to study at Columbia University from 1963 to 1964. It was at his first reporting job in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for WISN (then a CBS affiliate) where he met his first wife, fellow reporter Barbara Barnes Ortieg. A widower and radio and television pioneer in her own right as the only daughter of radio and television pioneer (then WISN Program Director) Patt Barnes. Plante married Barbara and adopted her four young boys (Patrick, Micheal, Daniel and Christopher). They went on to have two more sons (Brian and David) and divorced in 1969.
Plante joined CBS News in June 1964 as a New York-based reporter/assignment editor and served as a correspondent in the Chicago bureau (1966-76). During that time, he served two of his four tours of duty in Vietnam, reporting on the bombing strikes over North Vietnam, the Vietnamization and pacification programs in the south and the fall of the governments in Vietnam and Cambodia. Plante also covered the civil rights movement in Mississippi and Alabama, including Dr. Martin Luther King's historic march from Selma to Montgomery.
Plante was moved to Washington D.C. in 1980 and has been a CBS News White House correspondent during the administrations of Ronald Reagan (beginning in 1981), Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
During the administration of the first President Bush, he was CBS News' State Department correspondent (1989-92). Plante's reports are seen regularly on The Early Show, where he is Senior White House Correspondent, and the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.
During the Reagan presidency, he covered the President’s activities and major overseas trips, including the historic summit meeting in Moscow with Mikhail Gorbachev. Plante was part of the CBS News team which received a 1986 Emmy Award for coverage of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik, Iceland. He also covered Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign and was part of the CBS News team that won an Emmy Award for its coverage.
Plante has been based in CBS News’ Washington bureau since December 1976. He has covered every Presidential campaign since 1968. Before his first White House assignment, he covered general and off-year elections, including the national political conventions. In 1968, he reported on the campaigns of Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. During the 1972 campaign, Plante's assignments included covering candidates George McGovern and Sargent Shriver. In the summer of 1976, he covered Jimmy Carter and then, in the fall, Walter Mondale's vice presidential campaign. Plante was a floor reporter at the 1988 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
At the State Department, he covered Secretary of State James Baker's trips to the Middle East, both before and after the Gulf War; the changing U.S.-Soviet relationship during that period; and the 1991 Middle East peace talks, among many others.
Plante's reporting has not been restricted to politics, however. He covered the fall of Skylab and Pope John Paul II's visit to the United States, both in 1979. Earlier that year, following the Shah's departure from Iran, Plante reported on the revolution in that country and was one of two American journalists to cover a revolutionary trial in Teheran. He was the reporter on a 1977 five-part series examining America's criminal justice system for the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
He has received many major broadcast journalism awards. In addition to Emmy Awards for his coverage of the death of Princess Diana, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit and Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign, he won an Emmy for his investigative report on the U.S.-Soviet wheat deal broadcast on the CBS Evening News (1972). Plante's international work was recognized with a 1971 Overseas Press Club Award for his reports on the India-Pakistan War, and a second in 1975 for Best Radio Spot News Reporting for his coverage of the fall of the South Vietnam and Cambodian governments and evacuation of American personnel.
He went on to marry Robin Smith, an award-winning documentary producer. One of Bill's sons, Dan Plante, is a reporter and anchor for KUSI Television in San Diego, California. Another, Chris Plante—an Edward R. Murrow Award winning journalist for his coverage of the Pentagon attack on 9/11—is currently a talk radio host on WMAL in Washington, DC and son (Micheal) is a Peabody Award winning documentary producer for ESPN.
On August 13, 2007 as Karl Rove made his exit from the Bush administration, Plante shouted "If he's so smart, how come you lost Congress?" on the South Lawn of The White House.
