Josh Howard Becomes Specials & Long-Form Vice President At CNBC

In March, TVNewser reported a rumor that former 60 Minutes Wednesday EP Josh Howard had been spotted in the halls of CNBC. Nine months later, it proves to be true: CNBC president Mark Hoffman named Howard the vice president of specials and long-form programming today.

Here’s what the CNBC press release says about Howard: “He resigned from CBS News in March 2005, six months after a Wednesday “60 Minutes” broadcast of a report on President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard that was later found to have been based on documents that could not be authenticated. An independent panel commissioned by the network said that if CBS News had followed the course of action proposed by Howard — which included holding off broadcasting the original report, if only for a few additional days — damage to the news organization could have been minimized.”

Of Howard’s role in the controversy, Hoffman tells the NYT: “He paid with his job. But there’s a couple of decades of tremendous work that preceded that.”

Howard worked at CBS for 23 years. He has won numerous journalistic awards, including eighteen national Emmy Awards for reports broadcast on the “CBS Evening News” and “60 Minutes.”

He will start at CNBC on Monday.