Marine veteran Hodding Carter III, who served as the State Department s spokesman during the Iran hostage crisis and promoted media innovation as head of the Knight journalism foundation, died May 11 at a retirement community in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 88.
Hodding Carter III ’57 was a prominent journalist before becoming spokesman for the State Department during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. He would later serve as University trustee.
Hodding Carter III, a Mississippi journalist and civil rights activist who as U.S. State Department spokesman informed Americans about the Iran hostage crisis and later won awards for his televised documentaries, has died. He was 88.
Hodding Carter III, a Mississippi newspaperman and award-winning television journalist who kept Americans informed about the Iran hostage crisis as State Department spokesman, has died at age 88. His daughter Catherine Carter Sullivan confirmed he died Thursday in North Carolina. Carter was no relation to President Jimmy Carter, but both rose through Southern Democratic politics. Hodding Carter III was a civil rights activist as well as a journalist at his family’s Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Mississippi. He later anchored television programs and steered the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He also ran the John S. Knight and James L. Knight Foundation.