Bernard Edinger, a 1985 Nieman Fellow, died in Paris on June 25, 2022. He was 80 years old and had recently been battling leukemia.
A French national, Edinger grew up in the United States in the 1950s and attended the French Lycée in New York. He joined Reuters in 1969 and reported from nearly 50 countries on four continents. During his 32-year career with the news agency, he worked from London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Nairobi. The many stories he covered included the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1975 fall of Saigon, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and coups and droughts in Africa.
In 2004, Edinger was named Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d’Honneur, the highest French distinction for military and civil accomplishments. He had been recommended for the award by the French Ministry of Defense, where he had worked after retiring from Reuters in April 2001. His responsibilities there included media training in English for would-be press officers, lectures on media-military relations and writing for ministry publications on military history and foreign armies. He had served as a French Marine paratrooper from 1961-1963.
Edinger additionally freelanced for The Jerusalem Report magazine and The Jerusalem Post and served on the board of the French Defence Correspondents Association.
He leaves his wife Suzanne and two daughters, Sarah Nadia and Julia.
