Kenneth Walker, a journalist awarded by Emmy, whose reporting on ABC Nightline’s information program has helped to draw the brutalism of the Apartheid racist system in South Africa to the eye of the US public by driving it to the agenda of US politicians, died on April 11 in Washington. He was 73.
His cousin and his artist Jeff Brown mentioned his loss of life in hospital was brought on by a coronary heart assault and was not broadly reported on the time.
The weekly reflection of G -H -Walker of the regularly brutal coverage of racial segregation of South Africa – manufactured for Nightline with Ted Kopel, the anchor of this system and a staff of reporters – gained the Emmy Award from 1985. from the Nationwide Academy of Tv Arts and Sciences for distinctive information evaluation. He was additionally awarded a gold stick of Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia.
“The best way solely tv could also be, Nightline revealed to viewers the ache, grief and fury that deletes the struggles of this divided nation,” mentioned DuPont -Columbia’s quote. “Masterly and exquisitely produced, it was in all probability probably the most highly effective, actually probably the most uncommon tv of
The Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists known as the Walker Journalist of the 12 months in 1985 for this reporting. The Affiliation had already given him a reward for his work in print journalism-for his four-piece Apartheid collection for The Washington Star, when he gained one of the best award on the 2001 radio journalism Affiliation, he grew to become the primary individual to obtain his highest awards for printing, tv and radio.
Later, the Affiliation additional respects him along with his award for the achievement of Frederick Douglas.
Throughout his 4 a long time profession, Mr. Walker was a Washington star reporter (1969 to 1981, when he folded), for Nightline (from 1981 to 1988) and for NPR, the place he was the pinnacle of the Africa Bureau from 1999 to 2002.
G -n Kopel recalled in an interview that G -n -Walker “is one in all a lot of Afro -American officers at Nightline, who’re gently and never so light, insisting on extra consideration to Nelson Mandela when he was nonetheless in jail and was every little thing however the hero of the Rojan (Room.
G -n -Walker helped persuade the ABC leaders to spend about $ 1 million to ship the Nightline manufacturing staff in South Africa for a number of weeks, d -n -Koppel mentioned: “His heritage is that he performs an essential position in serving to us and this system is to do. Rewards than simply for any program we have ever achieved. “
However Mr. Walker didn’t restrict his criticism to different nations. He was additionally frank about racism in America and the particular duty of black journalists.
In 2021 on the annual roundtable carried out by Richard Prince, the previous reporter and editor of Washington Publish, who writes on-line column JournalG -n -Walker has recognized the US as a “place of energetic crime”, which ensures a UN investigation into crimes in opposition to humanity resulting from quite a few racist incidents that “the media, together with most black journalists, ignore.”
He most well-liked reparations for slavery and criticized the destructive depiction of blacks on tv and in standard music.
He additionally mourned the scarcity of black reporters; He wrote in a Fb submit 2022. Racist hiring practices It was unimaginable for the media to tell the general public. “
Kenneth Reginald Walker was born on August 17, 1951 in Washington. His father William was Kabiver; His mom Lily was a state official.
After graduating from Archbishop Carol Excessive Faculty in 1969, he labored on the Washington Star as a duplicate boy whereas visiting the Catholic College of America by scholarships. He left college earlier than graduating to assist his rising household and have become a star reporter.
Mr. Walker survived two siblings, Tabia Berry and Vicky Walker Parson and three grandchildren. His marriages to Jacqueline Demesme and Raesa Luna ended with divorce. Daughter of his first marriage, Maisha Hunter, died in 2017.
As a star reporter, Mr. Walker coated the White Home and the Supreme Court docket, and likewise serves as a nationwide and overseas correspondent.
Whereas he was nonetheless on the star, he began engaged on tv as internet hosting the general public -up present over the ABC department in Baltimore, specializing in the issues of explicit curiosity to black viewers. After the star folded in 1981, he was employed in ABC as a Basic Project reporter. He continued to cowl the White Home and the Ministry of Justice for the community.
When in December 1984, “60 minutes” broadcast Apartheid phase, G -n Walker launched ABC to cowl racial segregation in South Africa. (The Nightline staff, which ultimately gained Emmy for this protection, included govt producer Richard Kaplan; three senior producers, William Moore, Robert Jordan and Betsy West; and two reporters, Mr. Walker and Jeff Greenfield.)
“The blacks within the US wrote and known as ABC and different networks massively, one thing that doesn’t occur fairly often,” quoted Mr. Walker in “Black Journalists: The Historical past of Nabj” (1997) by Wayne Dawkins. “Additionally, the Black South African resistance has escalated till it may now not be ignored.”
Later, Walker briefly mounted “USA At present: The Tv Sequence”; It produces the Jesse Jackson Present, a syndicated discuss present aired in 1990 and 1991; And he based the Lion Home Publishing, whose books embody “Black American Witness: Reviews from the Entrance” (1994) by Earl Caldwell, a former reporter of The New York Occasions.
After leaving NPR, D -N -Walker stays in South Africa, the place he serves as a director of communications for the care of the humanitarian group.
He returned to Washington in 2015, needing a kidney transplant. Excessive Faculty classmate Charlie Bal, whom he contacted by way of a bunch of graduates, proved a match and donated a kidney.
“Charlie’s reward was additionally as a lot a present of spirit as one of many life,” mentioned Mr. Walker in 2019. “As a member of the final technology of civil rights motion, I spent my life on the entrance traces of America’s steady wrestle with my earlier enslaved residents. Typically it appears that evidently this struggle is just not.
