Gail Christian, who broke barriers as a black on-air correspondent and achieved national fame at NBC News and PBS, died April 12 in Los Angeles. She turned 83.
The cause was complications from recent bowel surgery, said her husband, Lucy DeBardelaben.
Ms. Christian overcame a troubled childhood — including a prison sentence for armed robbery — to carve out a career as a prominent television journalist and news executive in the 1970s and 1980s, an era when the industry was dominated by white men.
She rose to prominence in American living rooms with her NBC News coverage of the trial of Patricia Hearst, the paper’s heiress who was kidnapped in 1974 by a band of leftist revolutionaries called the Symbionese Liberation Army, and convicted two years later of taking part in a bank robbery with the group.
But for Mrs. Christian, it wasn’t enough just to gain notoriety as a rare black face on the evening news.
“I’ve always wanted to be ‘the black reporter,’ like covering black stories,” she said in a 1986 interview with The Chicago Tribune. “I felt that was the reason I was there. I was bothered I felt then, as I feel now, that it is very dangerous for a group of people to live in a society where they are not allowed to interpret themselves.”
She accomplished that mission with articles like “A Country Called Watts,” an hour-long special for NBC News in 1977 that explored the efforts of residents of that Los Angeles neighborhood to come together and the bloody civil unrest that had ensued. in response to police brutality in 1965, and to rebuild burnt-out blocks despite alleged government indifference and continued police harassment.
“Gail continued to push for black people’s faces and voices to be on TV news so images of black men in handcuffs would no longer be the only images of black people for white viewers to see,” said Gary Gilson, the former faculty director of a summer program for minority students at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, said in a telephone interview. “And her pioneering role as a black news reporter allowed young black kids, many for the first time, to see someone admirable on TV who looked like them. It gave them recognition and hope.”
After two years at NBC News, Ms. Christian became the news director of public broadcaster KCET in her native Los Angeles, where she created a “60 Minutes” style investigative series called “28 Tonight” (the station was on Channel 28).
That program featured several award-winning segments, including one about a banking scandal that harmed low-income communities and another about an Orange County chemical spill that caused illness in the area, each of which won a Peabody Award.
In 1981, she moved to Washington, where she began a nearly ten-year stint as a news director for the Public Broadcasting Service.
“Since I’ve been in the business, I’ve always wanted to be one of the buyers who go into that little room and decide what gets covered and by whom,” she said in a 1976 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “But at NBC, I’ve never seen women go into that little room. No minorities either. I thought, this is my chance.”
“As Bobby Seale said,” she added, referring to one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, “‘Seize the time.'”
Gail Christian was born Gail Patricia Wells on February 20, 1940, in Los Angeles, one of four children of Edwin Wells, who worked on an assembly line for the Hughes Aircraft Company, and Lucille (Scruggs) Wells, who owned a beauty salon. in the Leimert Park neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. (She later adopted Christian, a name from her mother’s side of the family, as her professional surname.)
Ms. Christian grew up in Venice, California, and studied world history at California State University, Los Angeles, for three years before dropping out in 1962 to join the Air Force. in 1965 she was convicted of armed robbery after robbery at a hotel.
The heist, which netted less than $100, sent her to the California Institute for Women in Chino for 18 months. “It was a bit absurd, now that I look back on it,” Mrs. Christian said in a 1976 interview with TV Guide. “I really didn’t have to. I had a loving family, unlike many others in prison. I was just kind of pushed out of shape at the time.
After she served her time, a fellow parole who worked as a telephone operator at The San Francisco Examiner tipped her off that the paper was planning to hire two black reporters to diversify the workforce. Without any experience, Mrs. Christian considered the opportunity a gamble, but she managed to work her way into an apprentice role by stretching the truth.
“I gave them this song and dance about working on this little black paper that was burned out by the Klan,” she told The Tribune.
In 1970, she participated in an 11-week summer program for minority students in broadcast journalism at Columbia. (Geraldo Rivera was a classmate.) Two years later, she was hired by KNBC, the local NBC affiliate. She worked there for six years before being hired by NBC News.
Her tenure with PBS ended in 1989, shortly after the network became embroiled in controversy for airing a pro-Palestinian documentary called “Days of Rage,” which Ms. Christian acquired and was responsible for vetting. A news report claimed the film was backed in part by undisclosed Arab funding, which the producer denied.
In an interview with The New York Times, Ms. Christian said she resigned from PBS for other reasons. “You get burned out because this is a no-win situation,” she said. “You get silence when things are going well and outrage when there are questions.”
She eventually settled in Palm Springs, California with Mrs. DeBardelaben, whom she married in 2016. In 2003, the pair started the annual Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival.
In addition to Mrs. DeBardelaben, Mrs. Christian leaves a grandson. Her daughter, Sunday Barrett, died in 2019.
While Ms. Christian was silent about her prison sentence early in her career, she finally decided to make it known to a sympathetic executive at NBC. “The man just looked at me,” she recalls. “He says, ‘I don’t have enough problems. Should I listen to yours? Get out of here.’ Never heard a word again.”
