AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST NIKKI BATTISTE NAMED CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT
Nikki Battiste, an award-winning journalist, has been named a CBS News correspondent, it was announced today. Battiste will be based in New York and report for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms including CBS THIS MORNING, the CBS EVENING NEWS, CBS SUNDAY MORNING and CBSN, CBS News’ 24/7 live, streaming news service.
Previously, Battiste was a correspondent for CBS Newspath, the Network’s 24-hour television newsgathering service for CBS stations and broadcasters around the world.
Battiste is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist who has covered some of the biggest stories of our time.
Her groundbreaking investigations into the 2018 Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal received critical acclaim and resulted in the church taking action.
Working with the CBS News investigative unit, Battiste and her team uncovered allegations of sexual abuse against a priest still in active ministry in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, over which the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops president, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, presides. After Battiste questioned DiNardo about the allegations, the priest was removed from ministry. Two months after Battiste’s August 2018 exclusive interview with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the now-former Washington, D.C. archbishop, he resigned from his position. She also broke the story of nuns sexually abusing children, which led to more than 40 more victims coming forward. And in a television first, her original reporting led to two clergy abuse survivors sitting down face-to-face with the priest they say abused them as children.
Battiste traveled to Rome in February 2019 to cover Pope Francis’ Vatican summit addressing the clergy abuse crisis.
Since joining CBS News, she has reported on the gun debate in America and was the first to report on armed teachers in classrooms. She has reported and written several stories for the CBS EVENING NEWS series “Eye on America,” including a teachers strike in Sacramento and the debate over arming college students on campus. She also sat down with five sisters sexually abused by the same priest for an “Eye on America” report. Battiste has also covered major breaking stories for CBS News, including Hurricane Michael; the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting; the case of Colorado missing mother Kelsey Berreth; and the New Zealand mosque shooting.
Battiste joined CBS News in 2017 as a freelance correspondent for Newspath and was made a staff correspondent for Newspath in 2018.
Before joining CBS News, Battiste was an award-winning ABC News producer and reporter based in New York. She traveled the globe to cover breaking news and feature stories for all ABC News broadcast platforms, including “Good Morning America,” “World News Tonight,” “Nightline,” “20/20” and ABCNews.com.
At ABC News, Battiste reported extensively on the Amanda Knox case from Perugia, Italy. She was the first journalist in the world to sit down for an interview with Knox, after covering the Italian murder case for six years. Battiste booked and produced Diane Sawyer’s ABC News exclusive interview with Knox in an hour-long special, “Murder Mystery: Amanda Knox Speaks.” She also co-produced other ABC specials for Sawyer and “20/20.”
She also covered the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 from Perth, Australia; the Newtown and Virginia Tech school shootings; the Mother Emanuel Church shooting in Charleston; the San Bernardino attack; the Orlando nightclub massacre; and the Brussels bombings. She reported on the 2016 presidential election, Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S., the Ebola crisis and Hurricane Sandy. She investigated radicalization in America, the rising costs of cancer drugs, medical tourism and bullying in schools.
She began her career as an NBC News page, working on “Saturday Night Live” and “Today,” before working as a production associate at “Today.”
She has won several Emmy, Edward R Murrow and CINE Golden Eagle awards, and Peabody, Deadline and Front Page awards.
Battiste graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in politics, philosophy and economics. At Penn, she was co-captain of their Division I Field Hockey team. A Pennsylvania native, she now resides in New York City with her husband.
No comments:
Post a Comment