Threlkeld held positions at
WHAS-TV in
Louisville, Kentucky, and WMT-TV in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He joined CBS News in 1966 and served as a war correspondent in Vietnam in 1970. Threlkeld stayed with CBS until December 1981, serving as co-anchor of the
CBS Morning News (with
Lesley Stahl) from 1977 to 1979. He covered
John Paul II's visit to Mexico in 1979. Threlkeld went to
ABC News in 1982 and was given the special assignment of filing a weekly
Status Report segment for
World News Tonight, which sought to give a deeper perspective to the week's most important story. In that role, he reported on the
Falklands War, the
invasion of Lebanon and many other domestic and international issues.
Status Reports won a
DuPont-Columbia Award in 1983. After seven years at ABC, Threlkeld returned to CBS in 1989 and remained there until his retirement in 1999. During his news career, Threlkeld also covered the
Vietnam War, the
Persian Gulf War, and the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. In the United States he covered such stories as the
Robert F. Kennedy assassination and the
Patty Hearst kidnapping, as well as numerous political campaigns. Threlkeld's last assignment before retirement was as CBS News
Moscow correspondent. Threlkeld authored the book
Dispatches from the Former Evil Empire in 2001. ==Personal life==