David Jason Muir (born November 8, 1973) is an American journalist and the anchor of ABC World News Tonight and co-anchor of the ABC News magazine 20/20, part of the news department of the ABC broadcast-television network, based in New York City. Muir previously served as the weekend anchor and primary substitute anchor on ABC's World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer succeeding her on September 1, 2014. At ABC News, Muir has won multiple Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards for his national and international journalism.
According to the Tyndall Report, Muir's news reporting received the most airtime in 2012 and 2013. He has become one of the most visible journalists in America.[1] As of 2019, World News Tonightwith David Muir has become the most watched newscast in the United States.[2]
Early life and education
David Muir was born into a Catholic family[3] in Syracuse, New York,[4] and grew up on Onondaga Hill. Muir has one older sibling and two younger step-siblings, as well as six nieces and three nephews. As a child he watched ABC News' flagship program each night with his family and credits longtime anchor Peter Jennings as his biggest journalistic influence. He graduated from Onondaga Central Junior-Senior High School in May 1991 and attended local Ithaca College, graduating magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in May 1995.[5] During high school, he interned at WTVH-TV in Syracuse.[6] While in college Muir was inspired by a professor who told him he had "the cut of a TV newsman." He spent a semester at the Institute on Political Journalism at the Fund for American Studies at Georgetown University and another semester abroad at the University of Salamanca in Spain with the Institute for the International Education of Students.[5][7]
Career
WTVH television
From 1994 to 2000, Muir worked as an anchor and a reporter at WTVH-TV in Syracuse, New York.[6] Muir's reports from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Israel, and the Gaza Strip following the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin earned him top honors from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. The Associated Press honored Muir for Best Enterprise Reporting and Best Television Interview. The Syracuse Press Club recognized Muir as anchor of the "Best Local Newscast", and he was voted one of the "Best Local News Anchors" in Syracuse.
WCVB television
From 2000 to 2003, Muir was an anchor and a reporter for WCVB television in Boston, where he won the regional Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting and the National Headliner Award and Associated Press honors for his work tracing the path of the hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks.[8] The Associated Press also recognized his news-anchoring and reporting.[9]
In August 2003, Muir joined ABC News as anchor of the overnight news program World News Now. He also became anchor of ABC News' early morning newscast World News This Morning (America This Morning). Starting in June 2007, Muir was the anchor of World News Saturday. In 2006, and occasionally thereafter, he co-anchored the newsmagazine Primetime. In February 2012, Muir became anchor for the weekend newscasts, and the broadcast was named World News with David Muir. Muir has been silently credited with a rise in the ratings of the weekend evening broadcasts.[10] In March 2013, Muir was promoted to co-anchor ABC's 20/20 with Elizabeth Vargas.
In September 2005, Muir was inside the New Orleans Superdome as Hurricane Katrina hit, and stayed in New Orleans to report on the unfolding humanitarian crisis. Muir's reports revealed and highlighted the deteriorating conditions inside the Convention Center and Charity Hospital, as Muir and his photographer waded through chest-deep waters for blocks to find patients trapped inside the hospital.[5]
Muir reported from the Israeli-Lebanon border in October 2006 on the Israeli war with Hezbollah. Muir was in Gaza in March 2007 to cover the Hamas coup, reporting from inside the Gaza Strip.[5] In October 2007, Muir was dispatched to Peru after the worst earthquake to hit that country in more than two decades.
In September 2008, Muir reported from Ukraine, more than two decades after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. In April 2009, David Muir and Diane Sawyer reported a 20/20 hour about guns in America getting "disturbing results" as described by the New York Daily News.[11]
In May 2009, Muir's reporting on 20/20 revealed a significant increase in the number of homeless children in America. Muir made multiple trips to the Gulf of Mexico to investigate the BP oil spill. In April 2011, Muir reported from Haiti after the hurricane and returned to report on the attacks against women.[5]
In January 2010, David traveled to Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake, which orphaned tens of thousands of children and destroyed the country's buildings and basic services. More than 220,000 people died, and many others were injured in the 7.0-magnitude quake.[12] He has returned to Haiti multiple times since the earthquake hit, uncovering attacks on women and the unfolding mental health crisis in Port au Prince.[13]
In November 2012, Muir served as one of ABC's lead correspondents for the 2012 U.S. Presidential election. Muir's interviews with Republican candidate Mitt Romney[15] generated national headlines on the issues of economics and immigration policy in the United States.[16] Muir's Emmy-nominated Made In America series on the American economy is a continuing feature on his broadcast. Muir has brought the series to other television programs, including ABC's The View, where he has served as guest co-host.[17]
In January 2013, Muir reported from inside Iran, leading up to the nuclear talks.[18] Muir was the first Western journalist to report from Mogadishu, Somalia on the famine.[19] Muir and his team came under fire while reporting from Mogadishu. In 2013, he received the Edward R. Murrow Award for his reporting.
On June 27, 2014, ABC News announced that Muir would succeed Diane Sawyer as the anchor and managing editor of ABC World News. Muir made his debut broadcast on September 1, 2014. In April 2015, "World News Tonight with David Muir" became the country's most-watched evening newscast, outpacing NBC Nightly News for the first time since September 7, 2009.[20]
In March 2016, Muir released a year-long report on the heroin crisis in America winning a CINE Golden Eagle Award for his reporting.[21]
In 2020, Muir's ratings exploded during the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic along with the other Evening News programs.[23][24] Averaging around 12 million viewers, and becoming the most watched TV Program.[25] On May 6, 2020 Muir interviewed President Donald Trump about the COVID Pandemic.[26] The interview was met with some criticism as some felt Muir didn't adequately push back on Trump's falsehoods, or ask him enough follow-up questions.[27][28][29]
In 2021 he traveled to Southern Madagascar to report on the malnutrition and hunger in the country the famine is caused by Climate Change and is considered the first "Climate Change Famine." After the report, there was a massive surge of donations and support to the World Food Program which received 1.8 million dollars by 25,000 donors.[30][31][32]
In 2021, Muir became the lead anchor of breaking news and special event coverage for ABC News, a role previously held by GMA anchor George Stephanopoulos from 2014 to 2020.[33] The move reportedly angered Stephanopoulos.[34]
Honors
Muir delivered the commencement address at Ithaca College in New York in May 2011; he urged graduates to use their voices.[35] On March 13, 2015, the college awarded Muir, an alumnus, an honorary Doctor of Letters degree and the Jessica Savitch Award of Distinction for Excellence in Journalism.[36]
In 2013, TV Week called Muir one of the "12 to Watch in TV News".[37] He was listed as one of People's Sexiest Men Alive in 2014.[38]
On May 8, 2015, Muir delivered the commencement address at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. During the ceremony, he was given an honorary Doctor of Media degree.[39]
ABC World News Tonight is the flagship daily evening television news program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network in the United States. It is currently the most watched network newscast in the United States, with an average of 2 million more than its nearest rival, NBC Nightly News. Since 2014, the program's weekday broadcasts have been anchored by David Muir. As of February 6–7, 2021, Whit Johnson and Linsey Davis anchor the Saturday and Sunday editions of the newscast respectively.
David Shepard Smith Jr. is a former American broadcast journalist. He served as chief general news anchor and host of The News with Shepard Smith on CNBC, a daily evening newscast launched in late September 2020; but his program was canceled in November 2022. Smith is best known for his 23-year career at the Fox News Channel, which he joined at its 1996 inception and where he served as chief anchor and managing editor of the breaking news division. Smith hosted several programs in his tenure at Fox, including Fox Report, Studio B and Shepard Smith Reporting.
ABC News is the news division of the American television network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ABC World News Tonight with David Muir; other programs include morning news-talk show Good Morning America, Nightline, Primetime, 20/20, and Sunday morning political affairs program This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings was a Canadian-American television journalist, best known for serving as the sole anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 1983 until his death from lung cancer in 2005. Despite dropping out of high school, Jennings transformed himself into one of American television's most prominent journalists.
Television news in the United States has evolved over many years. It has gone from a simple 10- to 15-minute format in the evenings, to a variety of programs and channels. Today, viewers can watch local, regional and national news programming, in many different ways, any time of the day.
Charles deWolf Gibson is an American broadcast television anchor, journalist, and podcaster. Gibson was a host of Good Morning America from 1987 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2006, and the anchor of World News with Charles Gibson from 2006 to 2009.
20/20 (stylized as 2020) is an American television newsmagazine that has been broadcast on ABC since June 6, 1978. Created by ABC News executive Roone Arledge, the program was designed similarly to CBS's 60 Minutes in that it features in-depth story packages, although it focuses more on human interest stories than international and political subjects. The program's name derives from the "20/20" measurement of visual acuity.
Aaron Brown is an American broadcast journalist most recognized for his coverage of the September 11 attacks for CNN. He was a longtime reporter for ABC, the founding host of ABC's World News Now, weekend anchor of World News Tonight and the host of CNN's flagship evening program NewsNight with Aaron Brown. He was the anchor of the PBS documentary series Wide Angle from 2008 to 2009. He was a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University from 2007 to 2014.
Stephen James Doocy is an American television host, political commentator, and author. He is a co-anchor of Fox & Friends on the Fox News Channel.
ABC News Live is an American streaming video news channel for breaking news, live events, newscasts, and longer-form reports and documentaries operated by ABC News since 2018. The channel is available through various streaming device apps such as Roku, Hulu, YouTube TV, Sling TV, Pluto TV, Xumo, FuboTV, Haystack News, Samsung TV Plus, and the news division's other streaming platforms. Centaur Communications provides the channel to Belize.
Lester Don Holt Jr. is an American journalist and news anchor for the weekday edition of NBC Nightly News, NBC Nightly News Kids Edition, and Dateline NBC. On June 18, 2015, Holt was made the permanent anchor of NBC Nightly News following the demotion of Brian Williams. Holt followed in the career footsteps of Max Robinson, an ABC News evening co-anchor, and became the first Black male solo anchor for a major network newscast.
William Charles Beutel was an American television reporter, journalist, and anchor. He was best known for working over four decades with the American Broadcasting Company, spending much of that time anchoring Eyewitness News for WABC-TV in New York City. He also was an ABC radio network newscaster before ABC Radio split into four networks in January 1968. After the split he reported on the American Contemporary Network and occasionally substituted for Paul Harvey, while his Eyewitness News partner Roger Grimsby presented a daily afternoon radio newscast on the American Entertainment Network.
William Bret Baier is an American journalist and the host of Special Report with Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel and the chief political anchor for Fox. He previously worked as the network's Chief White House Correspondent and Pentagon correspondent.
Jacob Paul Tapper is an American journalist, author, and cartoonist. He is the lead Washington anchor for CNN, hosts the weekday television news show The Lead with Jake Tapper, and co-hosts the Sunday morning public affairs program State of the Union.
WTVH is a television station in Syracuse, New York, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is the only station whose broadcast license continues to be owned by Granite Broadcasting, a moribund company that sold most of its remaining assets in 2014 and 2017. Certain services are provided under a local marketing agreement (LMA) by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of WSTM-TV, a dual affiliate of NBC and The CW. The two stations share studios on James Street/NY 290 in the Near Northeast section of Syracuse; WTVH's transmitter is located in the town of Onondaga.
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Thomas Edward Llamas is an American journalist currently working for NBC News. He worked for ABC News as the weekend anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 2014 until his last ABC broadcast being on January 31, 2021. On May 3, 2021, he officially joined NBC as Senior National Correspondent and anchor for NBC News Now, hosting Top Story with Tom Llamas, as well as being a fill-in & substitute anchor for Today, and NBC Nightly News, He has won multiple Emmy Awards for his reporting, as well as two Edward R. Murrow awards.
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