 Morley Safer, 60 Minutes' longest-serving correspondent, died this week at age 84. Safer was in declining health when he announced his retirement last week; CBS News broadcast a long-planned special hour to honor the occasion on Sunday May 15 that he watched in his home. To celebrate Safer's remarkable tenure, executive producer Jeff Fager called on an in-house dream team -- editor Warren Lustig and producers David Browning, Katy Textor and Michelle St. John -- to create the tribute that aired Sunday night. "What makes a story a Morley story is his original voice. That work included a groundbreaking 1965 CBS News report from Cam Ne, Vietnam, where Safer showed U.S. Marines torching villagers' huts, and a 60 Minutes story on Lenell Geter, a black man in Texas wrongly accused of armed robbery and later exonerated as a result of Safer's report. Safer said that the pentagon treated him with contempt for the rest of his life. As we say in the broadcast, the journey was really the story." Safer's life was a work of art into which 60 Minutes fit seamlessly.
– Just days after retiring from 60 Minutes, Morley Safer is dead at age 84, reports CBS News. No word yet on a cause of death for Safer, who had worked on the show about half a century. His retirement, however, was attributed to unspecified health issues, notes CNNMoney. Prior to his work on 60 Minutes, the Canadian native made his name as a reporter covering the Vietnam War for the network. As part of its going-away tribute surrounding Safer's final show Sunday, CBS had posted videos celebrating his work here. "Morley was one of the most important journalists in any medium, ever," says CBS chief Leslie Moonves.