Jack Perkins, a former NBC News reporter and anchor and host of the A&E program “Biography,” died on Monday at his home in Nokomis, Fla., near Sarasota. He was 85.

His death was announced by the Florida public television station WEDU, where he hosted a weekly magazine series, “Gulf Coast Journal,” from 2004 to 2012.

Starting as a writer for NBC News in the early 1960s , Mr. Perkins went on, as a reporter, to cover the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in a 25-year career at the network and its station in Los Angeles. He made appearances on the “Nightly News,” the “Today” show and the series “NBC Magazine” and “Prime Time S unday.”

In 1985, he won a local Emmy Award for a commentary on KNBC in Los Angeles in which he criticized NBC, the station’s parent network, for joking about drug abuse on “Saturday Night Live.” The station’s management, he said, never suggested that he alter the commentary.