Ed Joyce, a former president of CBS News whose brief, turbulent tenure in the 1980s was marked by threatened corporate takeovers and settlement of a damaging libel lawsuit from Gen. William Westmoreland, has died. He was 81.
His death Saturday at his home in Redding, Conn., was confirmed by his son Randall Joyce, a producer with CBS News.
Ed Joyce, who retired at 55 and spent most of the years since as a horseman and civic leader in California’s Santa Ynez Valley, died as a result of throat cancer, his son said.
Joyce was the storied news operation’s president from 1983 until he was squeezed out in 1986.
The immediate cause of his departure, he said in his 561-page, 1988 memoir “Prime Times, Bad Times,” was his long-running conflict with newsman Dan Rather. Joyce had criticized Rather’s high salary, his mercurial personality, his stiff news delivery and his agent, whom he called a “flesh-peddler.”