Deepfake audio of Biden alarms experts in lead-up to US elections

• January 23, 2024

Margi Murphy | (TNS) Bloomberg News

No political deepfake has alarmed the world’s disinformation experts more than the doctored audio message of U.S. President Joe Biden that began circulating over the weekend.

In the phone message, a voice edited to sound like Biden urged voters in New Hampshire not to cast their ballots in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

“Save your vote for the November election,” the phone message went. It even made use of one of Biden’s signature phrases: “What a bunch of malarkey.” In reality, the president isn’t on the ballot in the New Hampshire race — and voting in the primary doesn’t preclude people from participating in November’s election.

Many have warned that new artificial intelligence-powered video and image generators will be used this year for political gain, while representation for nearly half of the world is on the line in polls.

But it’s audio deepfakes that have experts worried now.

They’re easy to edit, cheap to produce and particularly difficult to trace. Combine a convincing phone message with a voter registration database, and a bad actor has a powerful weapon that even the most advanced election systems are ill-equipped to handle, researchers say.

“The political deepfake moment is here,’’ said Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy think tank Public Citizen. He called on lawmakers to put in place protections against fake audio and video recordings to avert “electoral chaos.”

The fake Biden message comes as an increasing number of U.S. political campaigns use AI software to reach constituents en masse — and as investors are pouring money into voice-cloning startups.

On Monday, while the deepfake phone message was making the rounds, the AI voice-replicating startup ElevenLabs announced it had raised a new round of funding that valued the company at $1.1 billion.

The doctored political recording wasn’t the first. Last year, audio deepfakes spread on social media ahead of Slovakia’s parliamentary elections, including one clip in which party leader Michal Simecka appeared to be discussing a plan to purchase votes. Political use of video and audio deepfakes have meanwhile proven limited.

It’s unclear exactly how the Biden message was generated. New Hampshire’s attorney general was investigating the call on Monday. But tracking the fake audio to its source will prove especially difficult because it was spread by telephone as opposed to online, according to Joan Donovan, an assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University. Audio messages delivered by phone don’t come with the same digital trail.

“This is an indication of the next generation of dirty tricks,” Donovan said.

There’s another reason the fake Biden clip was particularly worrisome to disinformation researchers and election officials. It confirmed their biggest fear: Bad actors are using deepfakes not just to influence public opinion but to stop voters from coming to the polls altogether.

“Even if such misinformation introduces confusion that only impacts a few hundred or thousands of votes, it could be meaningful in terms of the results and outcome,” said Nick Diakopoulos, a professor at Northwestern University who has researched manipulated audio and elections.

The U.S. Federal Election Commission has taken small steps toward regulating political deepfakes, but it has yet to clamp down on the technologies helping to generate them. Some states have proposed their own laws to curb deepfakes.

Elections officials are running training exercises to prepare for an onslaught. Around 100 federal and state officials assembled in Colorado in August to brainstorm the best response to a hypothetical fake video containing bogus elections information.

Deepfakes were the focus of another exercise in Arizona in December when officials worked through a scenario in which a video of Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was falsified to spread inaccurate information.

Meanwhile, deepfake detection tools are still in their infancy and remain inconclusive.

On Monday, for example, ElevenLabs’ own detection tool indicated that the Biden call was unlikely to have been created using cloning software — even as deepfake detection startup Clarity said it was more than 80% likely to be a deepfake.

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©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers set to add lefty James Paxton to starting rotation

• January 23, 2024

LOS ANGELES – The Dodgers are putting the finishing touches on a near-complete makeover of their starting rotation.

The Dodgers are reportedly close to signing free agent left-hander James Paxton to a one-year contract for $11 or $12 million. The deal would also include bonus clauses that could take it higher. The team has not announced the signing officially yet.

The signing would take the Dodgers’ projected payroll for 2024 past $310 million and into the highest tear of the Competitive Balance Tax.

The addition of the 35-year-old Paxton means the Dodgers will head to spring training with a starting rotation of Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler (who is expected to join the rotation at some point early in the season), Bobby Miller and James Paxton. Young starters Emmet Sheehan, Gavin Stone and Landon Knack will compete as depth pieces. Paxton is the only left-hander in the group.

A year ago, the Dodgers opened the season with a starting rotation of Julio Urias, Dustin May, Clayton Kershaw, Noah Syndergaard and Michael Grove. Only Kershaw was still starting games at the end of the season. Only May (recovering from elbow surgery) and Grove (likely ticketed for a bullpen role) are still with the Dodgers now.

With 156 career starts over 10 seasons with the Seattle Mariners, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, Paxton is the most experienced pitcher in this year’s group. But he continues the Dodgers’ well-established willingness to take on pitchers with an injury history.

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Paxton has made more than 20 starts just three times in those 10 seasons (2017-19). He threw a no-hitter for the Mariners in 2018 but finished the season on the Injured List with a back injury. He eventually underwent surgery and made just five starts during the shortened 2020 season.

He left his first start of the 2021 season with elbow discomfort and underwent Tommy John surgery which sidelined him until 2023.

He made two trips to the IL last season (for a hamstring injury and knee inflammation) but went 7-5 with a 4.50 ERA in 19 starts. Paxton didn’t finish well. After going 5-1 with a 2.73 ERA in 10 starts before the All-Star break (and winning the American League Pitcher of the Month award), Paxton was 2-4 with a 6.98 ERA in nine starts after the break before ending the season on the IL with the knee issue.

​ Orange County Register 

‘I’m not safe here’: Schools ignore federal rules on restraint and seclusion

• January 23, 2024

Fred Clasen-Kelly | KFF Health News (TNS)

Photos show blood splattered across a small bare-walled room in a North Carolina school where a second grader repeatedly punched himself in the face in the fall of 2019, according to the child’s mom.

His mother, Michelle Staten, said her son, who has autism and other conditions, reacted as many children with disabilities would when he was confined to the seclusion room at Buckhorn Creek Elementary.

“I still feel a lot of guilt about it as a parent,” said Staten, who sent the photos to the federal government in a 2022 complaint letter. “My child was traumatized.”

Documents show that restraint and seclusion were part of the special education plan the Wake County Public School System designed for Staten’s son. Starting when he was in kindergarten in 2017, Staten said, her son was repeatedly restrained or forced to stay alone in a seclusion room.

Federal law requires school districts like Wake County to tell the U.S. Department of Education every time they physically restrain or seclude a student.

But the district, one of the largest in the nation, with nearly 160,000 children and more than 190 schools, reported for nearly a decade, starting in 2011, that it had zero incidents of restraint or seclusion, according to federal data.

Staten said she was alarmed to learn about the district’s reporting practices, and in March 2022 she sent a complaint letter to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. When the district set up her son’s special education plan, she wrote, “they said things like ‘it’s for his safety and the safety of others.’”

Further, she wrote, in his district files, “nowhere in the record was there documentation of the restraints and seclusion.”

The practice is “used and is used at often very high rates in ways that are quite damaging to students,” said Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for the Office for Civil Rights.

The Department of Education says it is meeting with schools that underreport cases of restraint and seclusion, tactics used disproportionately on students with disabilities and children of color like Staten’s son.

Lhamon called the practices “a life-or-death topic” and noted the importance of collecting accurate federal data. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced new guidance to schools in 2022, saying that, “too often, students with disabilities face harsh and exclusionary disciplinary action.”

‘Children With Bruises’

For more than a decade, school nurses, pediatricians, lawmakers, and others have warned that restraint and seclusion can cause long-lasting trauma and escalate negative behaviors. In the worst cases, children have reportedly died or suffered serious injury.

“In an ideal world, it should be banned,” said Stacey Gahagan, an attorney and civil rights expert who has successfully represented families in seclusion and restraint cases. The tactics are “being used in ways that are inappropriate. I’m seeing parents with pictures of children with bruises and children afraid to go to school.”

No federal law prohibits restraint and seclusion, leaving a patchwork of practices across states and school districts with little oversight and accountability, according to parents and advocates for people with disabilities.

Tens of thousands of restraint and seclusion cases are reported to the federal government in any given year. But those are likely undercounts, say parents and advocates for students, because the system relies on school staff and administrators to self-report. It’s a failing even the Department of Education acknowledges.

“Sometimes school communities are making a deliberate choice not to record,” Lhamon said.

The Wake County Public School System declined to answer questions about Staten’s case for this article, citing student privacy law.

A 2022 report to Congress found North Carolina schools handed lengthy suspensions or expulsions to students with disabilities at the highest rate in the nation.

The district in 2022 submitted revised restraint and seclusion data to the federal government dating to the 2015-16 school year, said Matt Dees, a spokesperson for the Wake County Public School System, where Staten’s son attended school. In a written statement, he said federal reporting rules had been confusing. “There are different guidelines for state and federal reporting, which has contributed to issues with the reporting data,” Dees said.

But parents and advocates for children with disabilities don’t buy that reasoning. “That explanation would be plausible if they reported any” cases, Gahagan said. “But they reported zero for years in the largest school district in our state.”

Hannah Russell, who is part of a network of parents and advocates in North Carolina that helps families navigate the system, said even when parents present pictures of their injured children, the school systems will say “it didn’t happen.”

In North Carolina, 91% of districts reported zero incidents of restraint and seclusion during the 2015-16 academic year, the second-highest percentage in the nation after Hawaii, a federal report found.

“This was a problem before covid,” said Russell, a former special education teacher who said one of her own children with a disability was restrained and secluded in school. “It is an astronomical problem now.”

North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction, which oversees public schools statewide, did not make officials available for interviews and did not answer written questions.

In an email, spokesperson Jeanie McDowell said only that schools receive training on restraint and seclusion reporting requirements.

Educators are generally allowed to use restraint and seclusion to protect students and others from imminent threats to safety. But critics point to cases in which children have died or suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and other injuries for minor transgressions such as failing to stay seated or being “uncooperative.”

Zero Incidents Reported

In 2019, the Government Accountability Office, which conducts research for Congress, said some school systems almost never tell the federal government about the use of restraint and seclusion. About 70% of U.S. school districts report zero incidents.

The Department of Education’s “quality control processes for data it collects from public school districts on incidents of restraint and seclusion are largely ineffective or do not exist,” a 2020 GAO report said.

Lhamon said her office is conducting investigations across the country and asking districts to correct inaccurate data. The Department of Education wants school districts to voluntarily comply with federal civil rights law protecting students with disabilities. If they don’t, officials can terminate federal financial assistance to districts or refer cases to the Department of Justice.

The Wake County Public School System settled a lawsuit last year after the district did not report any use of restraint or seclusion in the 2017-18 school year, even though a student was secluded or restrained and witnessed the practices used with other children, according to Gahagan, who represented the student’s family.

As part of the settlement, the district agreed to notify parents by the end of each school day if their child had been restrained or secluded that day.

Gahagan said transparency would increase in Wake County but that problems persist across the country. Schools sometimes keep seclusion incidents hidden from parents by calling them “timeouts” or other euphemisms, Gahagan said.

“For most parents a ‘timeout’ doesn’t mean being put in a closet,” Gahagan said. “What is the recourse for a parent? There are not a lot of checks and balances. There is not enough accountability.”

Still, Gahagan, a former teacher, expressed sympathy for educators. Schools lack money for counselors and training that would help teachers, principals, and other staff learn de-escalation techniques, which could reduce reliance on physical interventions, she said.

Jessica Ryan said that in New York City, her son, who has autism, received counseling, occupational therapy, and a classroom with a standard education teacher and a special education teacher.

But when Ryan’s family moved last year to Wake County, home to more than 1 million people and part of the famed Research Triangle region, she was told he didn’t qualify for any of those services in the district, she said. Soon, her son started getting in trouble at school. He skipped classes or was written up for disruptive behavior.

Then in March, she said, her husband got a phone call from their son, who whispered, “Come get me. I’m not safe here.”

Portions of photos sent to Michelle Staten from an official at her son’s former elementary school in North Carolina. The images show blood splattered across a small, bare-walled seclusion room where, Staten said, her son repeatedly punched himself in the face in 2019. Critics say restraint and seclusion are tactics used disproportionately on students with disabilities and children of color, like Staten’s son. (Michelle Staten/TNS)

After the 9-year-old allegedly kicked a foam soccer ball and hit a school employee, he was physically restrained by two male school staffers, according to Ryan. The incident left the boy with a bloody nose and bruises on his leg, spine, and thigh, the medical records say.

The Wake County school district did not respond to questions about the events described in the documents.

After the incident, Ryan said, her son refused to go to school. He missed the remainder of fourth grade.

“It is disgusting,” said Ryan, 39, who said she was a special education teacher in Wake County schools until she resigned in June. “Our kids are being abused.”

The district did not record the incident in PowerSchool, a software system that alerts parents to grades, test scores, attendance, and discipline, Ryan said.

In August, Ryan’s son began classes at another Wake County school. By late October, school and medical records say, he was restrained or secluded twice in less than two months.

Guy Stephens, founder and executive director of the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Maryland, said he founded the group more than four years ago after he learned his own son was afraid to go to school because he had been repeatedly restrained and secluded.

Stephens said some children subjected to the practice may start to act out violently at home, harm themselves, or fall into severe depression — impacts so adverse, he said, that they are a common part of the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

“When you go hands-on, you are putting more people in danger,” Stephens said. “These lives are being set on a path to ruin.”

In May, federal lawmakers proposed the Keeping All Students Safe Act, a bill that would make it illegal for schools receiving federal taxpayer money to seclude children or use restraint techniques that restrict breathing. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, and other supporters have said a federal law is needed, in part, because some districts have intentionally misreported numbers of restraints and seclusions.

Advocates acknowledge Congress is unlikely to pass the bill anytime soon.

School administrators, including AASA, a national association of school superintendents, have historically opposed similar legislation, saying that restraint and seclusion are sometimes needed to protect students and staff in dangerous situations.

AASA spokesperson James Minichello declined comment for this article.

Staten said she begged officials at Buckhorn Creek Elementary and the district to remove restraint and seclusion from her child’s special education plan, documents show. Officials denied the request.

“I feel like they were gaslighting me into accepting restraint and seclusion,” Staten said. “It was manipulative.”

Staten and her husband now home-school their son. She said he no longer has emotional outbursts like he did when he was in public school, because he feels safe.

“It’s like a whole new kid,” Staten said. “It sometimes feels like that was all a bad dream.”

(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Want to observe how Orange County’s primary ballots are counted? Here’s how

• January 23, 2024

From processing mail ballots to ensuring the software is tabulating votes correctly, there are a bevy of opportunities to observe various parts of the 2024 primary election process.

A tool meant to ensure transparency and accuracy in the election system, the observation system is open to any member of the public, according to the Orange County Registrar of Voters.

The Registrar has a full schedule on its website of when and what can be observed, but some significant activities include:

• Feb. 6: Observers can watch the accuracy testing of the county’s voting system, from the preparation of test ballots to the scanning of those on all devices. Those watching can also check the processing and counting of mail ballots starting this day; that includes the collection, return process, signature verification and sorting of ballots. Accepted mail ballots, the Registrar notes, cannot be actually counted until 8 p.m. on March 5, the primary day.

• Feb. 24: The first batch of vote centers open on this day where the processing of conditional voter registration and provisional ballots begins and can be observed. More vote centers will open on March 2.

• March 5: It’s Election Day, and watchers can observe as accepted mail ballots as well as in-person votes will begin to be tabulated by the voting system.

• March 15: Observers can watch as the Registrar uses test ballots on all voting devices to ensure the system is still accurately tabulating votes.

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Observers are not required to RSVP to take part in the process, said Enedina Chhim, a spokesperson for the Registrar of Voters.

Observers can watch audits and vote tabulations, take notes, challenge whether staff are following procedures and ask questions of a vote center lead or “observation ambassador” (Registrar staff assigned to assist observers, explain processes, answer questions and facilitate observer challenges) as long it does not interrupt the conduct of the election process. Observers will be given a badge upon signing in and must wear it while “maintaining a professional and respectful manner,” according to guidance from the Registrar.

Observers cannot go into an occupied voting booth, display any campaign material, directly challenge a voter, touch election-related equipment or staff, prevent other watchers from observing or use cell phones or cameras outside of designated areas, according to the guidance.

Ballot processing, audits, testing and tallying will occur at the Registrar’s Santa Ana office, 1300 South Grand Ave, Building C, but observers can also visit the vote center and drop box locations around the county to check daily operations there.

In addition to observing in person, the Registrar will set up live streams, including on election night.

More dates and information about election observing can be found at the Registrar’s website, ocvote.gov/observe. Questions can also be directed to the Registrar’s office by calling 714-567-7600.

​ Orange County Register 

Appeals court lets Trump gag order stand in Jan. 6 case

• January 23, 2024

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Katelyn Polantz and Devan Cole | CNN

The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, declined to rehear arguments over whether former President Donald Trump can be prohibited from talking about witnesses and court staff while he awaits trial in the special counsel’s January 6 criminal case.

Trump has unsuccessfully tried to challenge the gag order placed on him by Judge Tanya Chutkan late last year through appeals.

The 11 judges from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to touch the case after a three-judge panel previously upheld the gag order against Trump. There were no statements or dissents made by any of the judges.

Trump can appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, and his attorneys have previously indicated that they would appeal the matter to the nation’s highest court if necessary.

CNN has reached out to Trump’s legal team for comment.

In a unanimous decision issued last month, the three appellate judges said that Trump can be barred from talking about witnesses as well as prosecutors, the court staff and their family members.

But the court said the gag order does not apply to comments made about special counsel Jack Smith and narrowed the prohibition Trump had regarding speaking about witnesses in the case, a change from the original gag order.

The three judges on the panel — Patricia Millett, Nina Pillard and Bradley Garcia, all Democratic appointees — found Trump’s words on the public stage could undermine the fairness of a jury trial, sway or intimidate witnesses and imperil court staff. The court said that justifies limiting Trump’s speech, even while he campaigns to return to the presidency.

“Mr. Trump’s documented pattern of speech and its demonstrated real-time, real-world consequences pose a significant and imminent threat to the functioning of the criminal trial process in this case,” the appeals court wrote.

This story has been updated with additional details.

​ Orange County Register 

Lance Larson “winner” of the most controversial swim race in Olympic history is dead at 83.

• January 23, 2024

For 15 glorious minutes at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico del Nuoto on the opening night of the swimming competition, Lance Larson was celebrated as an Olympic champion.Moments earlier on the night of August 26, 1060, Larson, the El Monte High School and USC standout, overtook in the closing meters and then out-touched Australia’s John Devitt to win the 100-meter freestyle final. Devitt congratulated Larson on his victory. Photographers crowded around his lane snapping photos of the new gold medalist.Larson even took a victory lap around the Olimpico del Nuoto pool deck.”And then we started hearing whispers,” Larson would later recall.Larson lost his gold medal in what more than 60 years later remains the most controversial swimming race in Olympic history when Devitt was single-handily awarded the Olympic title by a judge who had exceeded his authority in a decision that  prompted changes in how swimming results are determined and lead to more than six decades of criticism of the International Olympic Committee not only for not interceding in Rome but failing to undo the injustice by not awarding Larson a gold medal in the ensuing years.”It was a bad deal,” Larson later said.

Larson, who went on to be a longtime dentist in Orange, died on January 19. He was 83.

A Celebration of Life will be held March 1 st 11:00am at the Garden Grove Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in Garden Grove, California. In lieu of flowers, contributions in memory of Lance M. Larson may be made to the Trojan Victory Fund supporting the University of Southern California Men’s and Women’s Swim & Dive Program at https://usctrojans.com/sports/trojan-athletic-

Blonde, tan and tall (6-feet-1, 174 pounds), Larson looked like he had dove into the waters of Olimpico del Nuoto straight off the silver screen of one of the beach films that were gaining popularity at the time, the ultimate Southern California golden boy.

At El Monte he was the first prep swimmer to break the 50-second barrier in the 100-yard freestyle and the man in the world to break the one-minute barrier in the 100-meter butterfly.

In Rome, Australia’s Jon Henricks, the defending Olympic champion, was eliminated in the semifinals leaving the focus in the 100 freestyle final on Devitt, the current world record-holder at 54.6 seconds, and Larson, then 20.

The pool’s lights were dimmed for the final for dramatic effect, a decision that observers said led to the post race confusion.Brazil’s Manuel Dos Santos led early but was passed by Larson and Devitt with 25 meters to go. Larson touched the final wall underwater, Devitt reaching the finish with a touch out of the water. Peter Daland, USC’s Hall of Fame head coach, later said Larson won the race by half a foot.

“Everybody down there told me I had won,” Larson told reporters after the race.

Indeed the three timers timing Larson had him finishing in 55.0, 55.1 and 55.1. The timers timing Devitt all clocked him in 55.2. But the results at the time were determined not by time but by finishing judges. The three first place judges voted Devitt the winner by a 2-1 vote. But the three second place judges also determined that Devitt was the runner-up by 2-1 vote. An newly developed automatic electronic timing system recorded Larson in 55.10 and Devitt in 55.16. But the system at the time was not used for official purposes.Despite Larson’s edge in both the manual and electronic timing, the swimming competition’s chief judge, Hans Runstromer of West Germany, who had no authority over the matter, took it upon himself to declare Devitt the Olympic champion and ordered Larson’s time changed to 55.2, the same as Devitt’s, a new Olympic record.Runstromer insisted he had been at the finishing line at the end of the race. But photographs and video clearly showed him five meters down the side of the dimly lit pool as far away as 25 meters from where Larson and Devitt finished.U.S. officials appealed Runstromer’s ruling to no avail.”One man got the time and the other got the gold medal,” Larson later said.R. Max Ritter, one of the founding members of swimming’s international governing body, FINA, now World Aquatics, fought unsuccessfully for decades to have the Rome results corrected.”Physical Culture and Sport: Studies and Research,” an academic journal determined in 2009 that “Runstromer’s decision undoubtedly sanctioned untruth.”But the IOC has refused to overturn that untruth, a point that was highlighted in 2002 when the IOC awarded Canada figure skating pairs Jamie Sale and David Pelletier during the Salt Lake City judging scandal.Devitt died last August after a long illness. He was 86.“I think,” Larson once told the New York Times, “John has had to live with the feeling for many years that he probably didn’t really win that gold medal.”

​ Orange County Register 

LA Times slashes more than 20% of newsroom staff as paper confronts ‘financial crisis’

• January 23, 2024

The Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, facing what senior leadership described this week as a “financial crisis,” commenced a round of painful layoffs across the newsroom, a workforce reduction that is set to be one of the most severe in the newspaper’s 142-year history.

The cuts will impact at least 115 journalists, the newspaper reported, or slightly more than approximately 20% of the newsroom. Some 94 of those cuts will be among unionized employees, union chief Matt Pearce said, meaning a quarter of the union will be laid off.

Pearce described the total number of employees being laid off as a “devastating” figure, but said it was “nonetheless far lower than the total number” expected last week.

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A spokesperson for The Times, which is owned by biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, did not immediately comment.

The newspaper, which houses the largest newsroom in the western US, has plunged into disarray in recent weeks as it faces a major financial shortfall, losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Its top editor, Kevin Merida, suddenly announced his departure. And two of the four members of an interim leadership team announced by Soon-Shiong have also abruptly exited in recent days.

​ Orange County Register 

Charles Osgood dies at 91; longtime TV and radio journalist for CBS News

• January 23, 2024

By Mark Kennedy | Associated Press

NEW YORK — Charles Osgood, a five-time Emmy Award-winning journalist who anchored “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades, hosted the long-running radio program “The Osgood File” and was referred to as CBS News’ poet-in-residence, has died. He was 91.

CBS reported that Osgood died Tuesday at his home in Saddle River, New Jersey, and that the cause was dementia, according to his family.

Osgood was an erudite, warm broadcaster with a flair for music who could write essays and light verse as well as report hard news. He worked radio and television with equal facility, often wore a bow tie and signed off by telling listeners: “I’ll see you on the radio.”

“To say there’s no one like Charles Osgood is an understatement,” Rand Morrison, executive producer of “Sunday Morning,” said in a statement. “He embodied the heart and soul of ‘Sunday Morning.’ … At the piano, Charlie put our lives to music. Truly, he was one of a kind — in every sense.”

Osgood took over “Sunday Morning” after the beloved Charles Kuralt retired in 1994. Osgood seemingly had an impossible act to follow, but with his folksy erudition and his slightly bookish, bow-tied style, he immediately clicked with viewers who continued to embrace the program as an unhurried TV magazine.

Charles Osgood, seen here in 1999, was anchor of “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades. He took over the program after the beloved Charles Kuralt retired in 1994.

In 1967, he took a job as reporter on the CBS-owned New York news radio station. Then, one fateful weekend, he was summoned to fill in at the anchor desk for the TV network’s Saturday newscast. In 1971, he joined the CBS network.

In 1990, he was inducted into the radio division of the National Association of Broadcaster’s Hall of Fame. In 2008, he was awarded the National Association of Broadcasters Distinguished Service Award.

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When he retired in 2016 after 45 years of journalism, Osgood did so in a very Osgood fashion.

“For years now, people — even friends and family — have been asking me why I continue doing this, considering my age,” the then-83-year-old Osgood said in brief concluding remarks. “It’s just that it’s been such a joy doing it! It’s been a great run, but after nearly 50 years at CBS … the time has come.”

And then he sang a few wistful bars from a favorite folk song: “So long, it’s been good to know you. I’ve got to be driftin’ along.”

Check back for a more complete obituary.

​ Orange County Register