Henry Champ, television journalist, dies at 75 - Washington Post

Mr. Champ was a District resident and, since 2008, held the ceremonial job of chancellor of Brandon University in Manitoba. "Eleven months of bad weather, and one month of good skating," he often quipped of Manitoba, the central Canadian province where he was raised.

With his chiseled features and arched eyebrows, Mr. Champ epitomized the foreign correspondent with a taste for hazard zones and a handsome wardrobe of trench coats and flak jackets. In a career spanning four decades, Mr. Champ cultivated a salty, common-man persona that connected with viewers. He once described himself as a proud Canadian but "not one of those who runs around with a beaver tattooed on my butt."

After a brief stint as a sports reporter in Manitoba, Mr. Champ rose to prominence with the Canadian network CTV. He was among the first Canadian journalists in communist China when the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1970, and he was one of the last correspondents to leave Vietnam when Saigon fell in 1975.

He covered the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal and Innsbruck, Austria, and served as host and correspondent for "W5," a CTV news magazine show similar in format to "60 Minutes." His reports ranged from the alleged mishandling of Canadian foreign aid for Haiti to police brutality in Toronto.

Like Canadian-born TV journalists Morley Safer and Peter Jennings, Mr. Champ was eventually lured to work in the United States. He joined NBC News in 1982 and was a correspondent in Frankfurt, Warsaw, London and Washington.

In the 1980s, he covered bloody conflicts in Central America and Northern Ireland, accompanied mujaheddin fighters during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and reported on both sides of the war between Iran and Iraq.

Mr. Champ drew significant attention for his 1986 interview with fugitive Palestine Liberation Front leader Mohammed Zaidan, better known as Abu Abbas.

Abbas, who called President Ronald Reagan "enemy No. 1" in the interview, was charged in the United States as the mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro off the Egyptian coast. The hijackers shot a wheelchair-bound American, Leon Klinghoffer, and threw him overboard. The Reagan administration offered a $250,000 bounty for Abbas.

In exchange for the interview, NBC had to promise not to disclose Abbas's whereabouts. The terms raised moral and legal questions, and NBC was denounced by the head of the State Department's counterterrorism unit for essentially allowing Abbas to spew propaganda.

Lawrence Grossman, then the president of NBC News, defended the "newsmaker" interview, saying that "an informed public is better than an ignorant one." Officials at other networks, including ABC and CNN, applauded the interview as a scoop that helped make the public better informed. Media writers weighed in on whether the interview was worth the price, considering that the newsiest aspect of the story — Abbas's location — went unaddressed. (It was later revealed that the interview took place in Algeria.) It took NBC News personnel two months to arrange a meeting with Abbas.