CBS News announced Wednesday that veteran White House Correspondent Peter Maer will retire at the end of the year.
One of the most respected members of the White House Press Corps, Maer is a five-time winner of the Merriman Smith award for deadline reporting from the White House Correspondents’ Association. He’s also won numerous other awards for his reporting.
Since arriving in Washington on Jimmy Carter’s charter flight on the eve of the 1977 inauguration, Maer has covered Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama for NBC/Mutual Radio and then CBS. He covered every convention and campaign since 1980.
He was among the reporters evacuated from the White House on Sept. 11, 2001, filing reports throughout and earning one of his Merriman Smith Awards.
“Maer was describing for radio listeners an atmosphere of `controlled chaos’ with West Wing staffers fleeing and agents scanning the skies,” the award judges said. They noted that when Maer¹s cell phone wouldn’t work, he grabbed a phone at a nearby business, and kept providing `vivid descriptions that made listeners feel part of the scene."
Among his many other awards:
-an Overseas Press Club citation for his coverage of an earthquake in Mexico City in 1985;
-a First Place Overseas Press Club Award for his coverage of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in 1986;
-the Scripps-Howard Award and National Radio Festival Award for coverage of Clinton's initiative on race relations;
-the 2005 Edward R. Murrow Award for radio feature reporting.
Maer also was part of the CBS teams that won awards for their coverage of Clinton’s impeachment trial, Reagan’s funeral, and the first anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
He will retire at the end of the year.