American journalist and politician who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs (1977-1980) under President Jimmy Carter.
Carter was the son of newspaper editor Hodding Carter and Betty Werlein Carter. He was in the United States Marine Corps from 1957 to 1959, before joining the staff of his father’s newspaper.
While a journalist with the Delta Democrat-Times, Carter wrote the book The South Strikes Back. He won the Sigma Delta Chi National Profession Journalism Society Award for Editorial Writing in 1961.
In the 1960s, Carter was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, both editorially and in political action. In 1968, he co-chaired the “Loyal Democrats of Mississippi” that replaced Mississippi’s previously all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention, but later criticized the Delta Ministry (part of the biracial coalition) in his editorials.
When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, Carter left his post in the government and moved into television as a major critic of Reagan?s policies. Up until 1994, he held various positions for ABC, BBC, CBC, CNN, NBC, and PBS, including anchor, political commentator, panellist, and reporter. His most notable television work was as the host of the media criticism show Inside Story on PBS.
Carter was married three times: first to Margaret Ainsworth, from 1957 until their divorce in 1978, then to Patricia M. Derian, from 1978 until her death in 2016, and then to Patricia Ann O’Brien, from 2019 until his death. He had four children, including actress Finn Carter.
Hodding Carter died on 11 May 2023 at age 88 at a retirement home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina following a series of strokes.
Link to Wikipedia biography