NEW YORK — Longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon, who covered most major overseas conflicts and news stories since the late 1960s during a five-decade career in journalism, has died in a car crash. He was 73.

Simon was among a handful of elite journalists, a “reporter’s reporter,” according to his executive producer, whose assignments took him from the Vietnam War to the Oscar-nominated movie “Selma.” He spent years doing foreign reporting for CBS News, particularly from the Middle East, where he was held captive for more than a month in Iraq two decades ago.

“Bob Simon was a giant of broadcast journalism, and a dear friend to everyone in the CBS News family,” CBS News President David Rhodes said in a statement. “We are all shocked by this tragic, sudden loss.”