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Hedrick Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy Award award-winning producer and correspondent. After serving 26 years with The New York Times from 1962-88 as correspondent, editor and bureau chief in both Moscow and Washington, Smith moved into television in 1989, reporting and producing more than 50 hours of long-form documentaries for PBS over the next 25 years on topics from the inside story of the terrorists who mounted the 9/11 attacks and Gorbachev's perestroika to Wall Street, Walmart and The Democracy Rebellion of grassroots citizen reform movements. Smith has authored five best-selling books including The Russians, The Power Game: How Washington Works, and Who Stole the American Dream?, and co-authored several other books, including The Pentagon Papers and Reagan: The Man, the President. Smith is currently Executive Editor of the website ReclaimTheAmericanDream.org and the YouTube channel The People vs. The Politicians.
As a foreign correspondent, Smith reported on the Vietnam War in Saigon (1963–64), on the Middle East region based in Cairo (1964–66), and on the Cold War from both Washington (1967–70) and Moscow (1971–74). Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting from Russia and Eastern Europe in 1974.
In 1971, Smith and fellow New York Times journalist Neil Sheehan were members of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that produced the Pentagon Papers, based on Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's top secret history of the Vietnam War under four U.S. presidents. Prior to publishing, Smith and Sheehan spent over three months studying 7,000 pages of classified documents and history, hiding from the government in New York's 6th Avenue Hilton hotel under an assumed name.
Recalling his work with Sheehan on the Pentagon Papers, Smith said: "What Neil Sheehan did was bring to the public a reckoning with the truth.. It was a real pleasure and real honor for me to have had the fun and the accomplishment of sharing the experience with Neil Sheehan."
In 1975, Smith became deputy national editor of the Times and then moved on to serve as Washington Bureau Chief (1976–79) and Chief Washington Correspondent (1979–88). During his Washington tours he covered five American presidents and their administrations.
Nearly three decades after his first Moscow tour, Smith returned to Russia to witness the crumbling of Soviet Communism and the breakup of the old Soviet Union. In The New Russians (1990), Smith gave a first-hand account of president Mikhail Gorbachev's dramatic political and economic reforms known as perestroika.
Over the past 25 years, Smith has focused on the American domestic scene, producing two books - Rethinking America (1995) and Who Stole the American Dream? (2012) that provide extended reporting and analysis on the causes of sharply rising economic inequality in the United States and its increasingly dysfunctional political system as well as efforts to restore greater fairness, transparency and inclusion in both the American economy and American politics.
Smith followed up with a pioneering PBS four-hour documentary series Inside Gorbachev's Soviet Union, exploiting his knowledge of Russia history and his ability to conduct TV interviews in Russian to get American television's first broad inside look at Gorbachev's perestroika reform campaign. That series won the prestigious Columbia - Dupont Gold Baton, or grand prize, for the best public affairs program on U.S. television in 1991. Smith has won all of television's major awards with other PBS programs. He earned national Emmys for The Wall Street Fix (2003) and Can You Afford to Retire? (2006) which he created for PBS Frontline. Two more of his programs won Emmy Award nominations - Critical Condition (2000), a three-hour examination of the U.S. health care system, and Tax Me If You Can (2004), a one-hour investigation of the tax dodges of corporations and the wealthy. In 2002, Smith shared the prestigious duPont-Columbia Gold Baton for Inside the Terror Network, his in-depth account of the Al-Qaeda bombers organizing, training and preparing for their attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
Coupled with Frontline investigative exposes like Bigger Than Enron (2002), Is Wal-Mart Good for America? (2004) Spying on the Home Front (2007), and Poisoned Waters (2009), one distinctive feature of Smith's television reporting is his focus not just on examining problems but in Seeking Solutions (1999), his mini-series on teen violence and hate crime, used by the Justice Department and Congressional committees; Making Schools Work (2005), a two-hour special on effective educational programs boosting student success; and Surviving the Bottom Line (1998) a four-hour report comparing the fairness of America's economy with Germany, Japan and China.
Those programs earned Smith and his production team public service awards from the Sidney Hillman foundation and from Sigma Delta Chi, the national honor society of journalists.
His most recent PBS documentary The Democracy Rebellion (2020) shows how grass roots citizen movements have challenged entrenched politicians and power brokers to win election law reforms against dark money, gerrymandering or vote suppression and to make America's broken democracy fairer, more open and more inclusive. It is now featured 24/7 on Smith's YouTube channel, " The People vs the Politicians".
Over 25 years, PBS viewers also came to know Hedrick Smith as a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review and as a special correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
In 1971, he was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its work on the Pentagon Papers. He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1974 for stories from Russia and Eastern Europe.
Smith has also won many television awards. His Frontline shows, The Wall Street Fix and Can You Afford to Retire? won Emmys and two other awards and his Frontline shows, Critical Condition and Tax Me If You Can were nominated. He has won or shared the Columbia-Dupont Gold Baton for the year's best public affairs program on U.S. television twice. He has also won the George Polk, George Peabody and Hillman awards for his excellence in reporting along with two national public service awards.
Smith is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Gridiron Club.
PBS programs, specials, and miniseries
PBS Frontline productions
PBS NewsHour segments
List of PBS productions
Smith has produced 24 programs and miniseries, four one-hour PBS specials, 11 Frontline productions, and nine PBS NewsHour segments. His most recent work, the feature-length documentary " The Democracy Rebellion", is featured on his YouTube channel.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The Democracy Rebellion'' (2020)
In popular culture
Mr. Smith appears in episode 17 of the anime series Tiger Mask II, where is the chief editor of New York Post.
Bibliography
External links
Categories: 1933 Births, Living People, Nieman Fellows, Pulitzer Prize For International Reporting Winners, American Male Journalists, The New York Times Journalists, The New York Times Editors, Writers About The Soviet Union, Choate Rosemary Hall Alumni, Williams College Alumni, People From Wallingford, Connecticut, Nautilus Book Award Winners, American Documentary Filmmakers, Pbs People, American Political Writers
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