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.
