Tributes paid to highly-respected TV journalist Robert Beers

A friend and colleague of a former Bermuda Broadcasting Company executive Robert Beers yesterday paid tribute to the award-winning journalist turned academic.

Tricia Walters, who worked at the firm’s ZBM station in 2003 alongside veteran journalist Robert Beers, said: “We became very good friends.

“He was at CBS in the US, all over the world, but he never gave you the idea he was a superstar as far as journalism was concerned.

“He was very eager to help people when he could, always very professional and he had an incredible voice. You couldn’t help but listen to him when he spoke to you.”

Mr Beers is survived by Bermudian wife Melanie, daughter Carrie, stepdaughter Freya and granddaughter Juliette.

Ms Walters was speaking following obituaries on Mr Beers in the Times Educational Supplement and the Guardian earlier this month.

American-born Mr Beers, who had been a lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire in England for the last eight years, died in February in Istanbul, Turkey, after falling at his hotel.

He was staying in the city en route to India to attend a conference on behalf of his university. 

Mr Beers, who was 67, started his career at CBS, working there between 1972 and 1987 in a variety of roles and became the station’s youngest-ever bureau chief, in the Miami office.

His reporting assignments took him to more than 60 countries , including four papal trips with John Paul II and special reports from the Middle East. He also covered several US elections, travelling abroad on the presidential plane Air Force One and interviewing both Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

He later worked for a Miami-based advertising firm and acted as a consultant to the Daily Gleaner in Jamaica before joining the BBC in an advertising role.

He won an Emmy for a series of reports on Russia as it moved from communism.

Ms Walters said: “Everyone who knew him was absolutely devastated when they heard what had happened. He was a fantastic guy.

“I have worked with a lot of people and most I have never stayed in touch with the way I did with Robert and his wife. I never heard him lecture, but I’m sure he was very good at it and I bet his students adored him.” n