Gail Christian, who broke barriers as a black on-air reporter and came to national prominence at NBC News and PBS, died April 12 in Los Angeles. She was 83 years old.

Her wife, Lucy Debardelapine, said it was a complication from a recent bowel surgery.

Christian overcame a troubled youth—including a prison term for armed robbery—to end a career as a prominent television journalist and news executive in the 1970s and 1980s, an era when the industry was dominated by white men.

It became a visible presence in American living rooms with it coverage to NBC News on the trial of Patricia Hearst, the newspaper heiress who was kidnapped in 1974 by a gang of left-wing revolutionaries called the Symbionese Liberation Army, and who was convicted two years later for participating in a bank robbery with the group.

But for Ms. Christian, it wasn’t enough just to appear as a rare black face on the evening news.

She said in Interview with the Chicago Tribune In 1986. I felt that was the reason I was there. I didn’t resent it in the least. I felt then, as I feel now, that it is very dangerous for a group of people to live in a society in which they are not allowed to explain themselves.”

It has succeeded in this task with features like “A Country Called Watts”, An hour-long 1977 NBC News special that explored the efforts of residents of this Los Angeles neighborhood to come together and re-evaluate the bloody civil unrest that occurred in response to police brutality in 1965, rebuilding burned-out blocks in the face of perceived government indifference and continued police harassment.

Gary Gilson, former faculty director of a summer program for minority students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, in a phone interview. “And her pioneering role as a black news reporter allowed black kids to see, many for the first time, an impressive person on television who looked like them. It gave them recognition and hope.”

After two years at NBC News, Ms. Christian became news director for public station KCET in her hometown of Los Angeles, where she created a “60 Minutes”-style investigative series called “28 Tonight” (the station was on channel 28).

The program featured several award-winning segments, including a segment on a banking scandal that harmed low-income communities and another on a chemical spill in Orange County that caused illnesses in the area, each of which won a Peabody Award.

In 1981 she moved to Washington, where she began nearly a decade as the news director for the Public Broadcasting Service.

“Since I’ve been in the business, I’ve always wanted to be one of the officers who goes out in that little room and decides what’s going to be covered and who’s going to cover it,” she said in a 1976 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “But at NBC, I never saw any women walk into that little room. Nor any minorities. I thought this was my chance.”

She added, “As Bobby Seale said,” referring to one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, “take the time.”

Jill Christian Jill Patricia Wells was born on February 20, 1940, in Los Angeles, one of four children of Edwin Wells, who worked on an assembly line for the Hughes Aircraft Company, and Lucille (Scruggs) Wells, who owned a cosmetology college. In the Leimert Park neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. (She later adopted Christian, a name from her mother’s family, as her professional surname.)

Ms. Christian grew up in Venice, California, and spent three years studying world history at California State University, Los Angeles, before dropping out to join the Air Force in 1962. She was caught in a raging crowd after being discharged, and in 1965, was found guilty of Armed robbery after eroticism in a hotel.

The theft, which resulted in less than $100, led to her admission to the California Institute for Women in Chino for 18 months. Christian said in a 1976 interview with TV Guide. “I really didn’t need to do that. I had a loving family, unlike a lot of the others in prison. I was just kind of pushed out at the time.”

After she had served her time, a paroled colleague who was working as a switchboard operator at The San Francisco Examiner gave her a tip that the paper was planning to hire two black reporters to diversify its staff. Without any experience, Ms. Christian considered the opportunity far-reaching, but talked her way into the role of an apprentice by stretching the truth.

“I gave them this song and they danced around working on this little black paper that the Klan burned,” she told the Tribune.

In 1970, she participated in an 11-week summer program for minority students in broadcast journalism at Columbia. (Geraldo Rivera was a classmate.) Two years later, she was hired by local NBC affiliate KNBC. She worked there for six years before NBC News hired her.

Her tenure at PBS ended in 1989, shortly after the network found itself embroiled in controversy over the airing of a pro-Palestinian documentary, Days of Rage, which Ms. Christian had acquired and was responsible for vetting. A news report confirmed that the film was partially supported by undisclosed Arab funding, which was denied by the film’s producer.

In an interview with The New York Times, Ms. Christian said she quit PBS for other reasons. She said, “You’re burning because this is a no-win situation.” “You are silent when things are going well and angry when there are questions.”

She eventually settled in Palm Springs, California, with Mrs. DeBardelaben, whom she married in 2016. In 2003, the couple started the Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival.

In addition to Mrs. DeBardelaben, Mrs. Christian is survived by her grandson. Her daughter, Sunday Barrett, died in 2019.

While Ms. Christian kept quiet about her prison term early in her career, she finally decided to divulge it to a sympathetic NBC executive. “The guy just looked at me,” she recalls. He says: I don’t have enough problems. Do I have to listen to you? Get outta here.’ I didn’t hear another word.”