Harold Dow was born in Hackensack, New Jersey. He attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Dow had been a correspondent for the CBS TV investigative news series 48 Hours since 1990, after having served as a contributor to the broadcast since its premiere on January 1988. He had been a contributing correspondent for 48 Hours on Crack Street, the critically acclaimed 1986 documentary that led to the single-topic weekly news magazine. Dow conducted the first network interview (for 48 Hours) with O. J. Simpson following the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. Dow’s reports garnered him numerous awards. He was honored with a George Foster Peabody Award for his 48 Hours report on runaways and a Robert F. Kennedy Award for a report on public housing. He received five Emmy Awards, including one for a story on the American troops’ movement into Bosnia (1996) and one for “distinguished reporting” for his coverage of the Pan Am Flight 103 disaster (1989). He won an RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award, and an Operation Push Excellence in Journalism Award for a 48 Hours profile of Patti LaBelle. He was also recently recognized by the National Association of Black Journalists for his report about Medgar Evers, which was featured in the CBS News special “Change and Challenge: The Inauguration of Barack Obama.”

Harold Dow covered many stories, including 9/11, during which he barely escaped one of the falling Twin Towers; the return of POW’s from Vietnam; and the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, with whom he had an exclusive interview in December 1976. Prior to his work with 48 Hours, Dow was a correspondent for the CBS News magazine Street Stories (1992–93), and had reported for the CBS Evening News and CBS News Sunday Morning since the early 1970s. Before joining CBS News, Dow had been an anchor and reporter at Theta Cable TV in Santa Monica, California. He was also a freelance reporter for KCOP-TV in Los Angeles, a news anchor for WPAT Radio in Paterson, New Jersey, and a reporter, co-anchor, and talk-show host for KETV-TV in Omaha, Nebraska. Dow was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Harold Dow joined CBS News in 1972, first as a broadcast associate, then as a correspondent with their Los Angeles Bureau while with KCOP-TV. Dow reported on the return of POWs from Vietnam and the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, with whom he had an exclusive interview in December 1976. A resident of Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Dow died from complications of asthma on August 21, 2010, behind the wheel of his car.