Jeff Fager, executive producer of 60 Minutes, said "Morley has had a brilliant career as a reporter and as one of the most significant figures in CBS News history, on our broadcast and in many of our lives.

"[2] Safer began his journalism career as a reporter for various newspapers in Ontario (Woodstock Sentinel-Review, London Free Press, and Toronto Telegram) and England in 1955 (Reuters and Oxford Mail).

[9] Still with the CBC, in 1961 he worked from London where he was assigned to cover major stories in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, including the Algerian War of independence from France.

[9] The following year, in 1965, he became the first full-time staff reporter of the CBS News bureau in Saigon to cover the growing military conflict in Vietnam.

[9] Safer's August 1965 Vietnam report, "The Burning of Cam Ne," was notable and controversial because he had accompanied a company of Marines to the village for what was described as a "search and destroy" mission.

Safer's report was among the earliest to paint a bleak picture of the Vietnam War, showing apparently innocent civilians as victims.

However, many American military and political leaders judged the story to be harmful to United States interests and criticized CBS News for showing it.

[15] While reporting another story from Vietnam, Safer and two CBS cameramen were shot down in a helicopter by Vietcong ground fire, although they all escaped serious injury.

I think there was a pretty strong determination by most people in this country, not all, that this really was a war of survival of the most important things we hold dear, to put it in simple terms, including of our own democracy.

"[2] Safer, who had been covering the funeral of Charles de Gaulle in Paris,[24] accepted the new position and joined 60 Minutes.

"[2] Over the subsequent decades, along with Safer, the other veteran reporters for the program included Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Walter Cronkite, Ed Bradley, Charles Kuralt, Diane Sawyer and Bob Simon.

[3] While he often added his own point of view to reports, Safer always maintained high professional standards, a style that helped establish the tone of 60 Minutes shows.

[24] He could write about offbeat subjects to give the show flavor, such as a piece he did in Finland about the Finns' obsession with the tango dance.

For that 1983 story, about Lenell Geter, a 25-year-old black aerospace engineer serving a life sentence for robbery, Safer sifted through details of the case and found factual inconsistencies and implied racial biases.

"[28] He retired after 46 years with CBS, a week before his death; by then Safer had set the record for the show's longest-serving correspondent.

He married Jane Fearer, an anthropology student, in 1968 in London, where he was serving as bureau chief for CBS News.

[34] Safer died at his New York home from pneumonia[26] on May 19, 2016, just eight days after announcing his retirement from 60 Minutes following 46 seasons with the show.

[35] Four days prior to his death, CBS aired a special 60 Minutes episode covering Safer's 61-year journalism career.