BBC correspondent Sir Charles Wheeler

LONDON -- Sir Charles Wheeler, who reported from Washington, Berlin and other capitals during a long and distinguished broadcasting career, died Friday. He was 85.

Wheeler died at his London home of lung cancer, the British Broadcasting Corp. said.

Wheeler covered the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1959 and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

He continued working for BBC radio until recently, his devotion tempered by his despair at changes in the industry such as the 24-hour TV news channel that he described as the BBC's "worst idea yet."

Wheeler was born in Germany and experienced life under Nazi rule. He recalled taking bread to Jewish neighbors in hiding. He was educated in Britain.

He joined the BBC in 1946, following service with the Royal Marines, and was assigned to Berlin in 1950. He was appointed South Asia correspondent in 1958.

Unafraid to add opinions to his reporting, Wheeler caused consternation by saying on air that an incoming president of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, was "an inexperienced eccentric at the head of a government of mediocrities."

He was posted to Berlin in 1962, to Washington in 1965 and back to Europe in 1973. He moved to the documentary series "Panorama" in 1977, and worked with "Newsnight" from 1980 to 1995. He was knighted in 2001.