Fredricka Whitfield

Background

She is the daughter of Olympian Mal Whitfield and has a younger half-brother named Edward Whitfield Wright.

Education

Whitfield attended Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville, Maryland, graduating in 1983. She earned a bachelor"s degree in Journalism from ’s School of Communications in 1987. While attending Howard, she served as a news anchor for campus radio station WHBC.

Career

She hosts the weekend daytime edition of Cable News Network Newsroom. Prior to joining Cable News Network, Whitfield was a correspondent for National Broadcasting Company News and served as an Atlanta-based correspondent for National Broadcasting Company Nightly News from 1995 to 2001. She worked for other news programs at National Broadcasting Company including The Today Show.

She was a morning and afternoon anchor as well as an assignment reporter.

Before joining National Broadcasting Company, Whitfield worked at WPLG-television in Miami, News Channel 8 in Washington, District of Columbia, KTVT-television in Dallas, WTNH in New Haven, Connecticut, and WCIV in Charleston, South Carolina. Since joining Cable News Network in 2002, Whitfield has reported many major stories.

She was the first anchor to break the news of the death of Ronald Reagan. She has reported the devastating Asian tsunami which occurred in December 2004.

Whitfield also reported from the Persian Gulf region during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

On June 13, 2015, Whitfield received backlash for referring to the gunman who attacked police in Dallas, Texas, as "courageous and brave" when she thought he might be part of a coordinated terrorist attack. The next day she claimed she misspoke, but no formal apology for the statement was made. After the backlash continued, she finally issued a formal on-air apology on June 15, saying she terribly misused those words, now understood how offensive it was and was sincerely sorry.

She still stopped short of apologizing directly to the police.

Cable News Network news continues to support Whitfield through this controversy.

Achievements

• She became famous for her unexpectedly hostile interview with Joan Rivers, who died two months later, and for her referring to the shooters of Dallas police in 2015 as "brave and courageous".