Robert Pierpoint, the CBS News correspondent who brought a human-interest touch to coverage of the Korean War and later reported on six presidents, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter, died Saturday in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 86.

The cause was complications of hip surgery, CBS News said.

In more than 40 years with CBS radio and television, Mr. Pierpoint covered the major news stories of his time, from Korea to the Kennedy assassination to Watergate, often reporting for “The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite” and on the magazine-type program “Sunday Morning” with Charles Kuralt.

Mr. Pierpoint’s “special memory” of covering the Korean War involved not a particular battle but his visit to a Seoul orphanage....