CBS CORRESPONDENT RANDALL PINKSTON TO SPEAK AT DECEMBER COMMENCEMENT

CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston will deliver the address at Old Dominion University's Dec. 17 commencement. The program for more than 2,000 graduates will begin at 1:30 p.m. in Norfolk Scope.

Pinkston, who has been a New York-based CBS News correspondent since 1994, reports regularly for the "CBS Evening News" and "CBS News Sunday Morning" and has contributed to other network broadcasts, including "48 Hours."

He has covered many major stories of the past decade for CBS News, including the devastating earthquake in Turkey; the Albanian refugee crisis in Kosovo and the U.S. military participation in the Balkans; Saddam Hussein's refusal to allow U.N. inspection officers to enter Iraq; the U.S. intervention in Haiti; the Susan Smith trial, during which he broke the story of her arrest and landed the first interview with her ex-husband, David Smith; The Freemen siege in Montana; and the Unabomber story.

Pinkston received a 1996 Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism and the Edward R. Morrow Award for his reporting on the CBS Reports documentary "Legacy of Shame." He also won two other Emmy Awards: in 1998 for coverage of the death of Princess Diana and in 1997 for coverage of the TWA Flight 800 disaster.

Prior to his New York assignment, Pinkston was based in CBS News' Washington, D.C., bureau, where he joined the network as a White House correspondent (1990-94). He assumed that position just one month before the start of the Persian Gulf war and, almost immediately, Pinkston became a fixture on "CBS This Morning" and CBS Radio reporting on the war. He spent two years at the White House covering President George Bush, including many trips abroad. Pinkston broke the story of Bush's illness while dining with Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa.

Pinkston began his career in Jackson, Miss., as a radio announcer and television news anchor/reporter. A native of Yazoo County, Miss., he is a 1973 graduate of Millsaps College in Jackson with a bachelor's degree in history and a 1980 graduate of the University of Connecticut Law School.