GLASS CEILING BREAKER

Emmy-Winning CBS Trailblazer Dies After 47 Years With Network

She was the first female producer of CBS Evening News, having covered Ronald Reagan’s Soviet Union trip and won 13 Emmys.

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The first female producer of CBS Evening News, and one of the network’s first-ever female news producers, has died at age 84. After 47 years with CBS, the network announced Linda Mason’s death on Wednesday, saying she died “peacefully… surrounded by family.” The New York native began as a desk assistant before working alongside anchors like Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Charles Kuralt, and Connie Chung, eventually becoming senior producer of CBS Evening News and executive producer of CBS Reports. Her 2023 memoir Speak Up: Breaking the Glass Ceiling at CBS News included a foreword by Chung. Over the years, Mason covered major historical events like President Ronald Reagan’s first trip to the Soviet Union in 1988 and the unrest in China leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The TV news pioneer also served as the network’s vice president of public affairs and senior vice president of its standards department, where she helped restructure during major events like the 2000 election night Florida recount fiasco. She won 13 Emmys, three Peabody Awards, a prestigious Brown University award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award grand prize.