Fredricka Whitfield
*Fredricka Whitfield was born on this date in 1965. She is a Black television journalist and news anchor. From suburban Washington, D.C., she is the daughter of Mal Whitfield and Nola Whitfield.
She has a brother and a sister and graduated from Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville, Maryland, in 1983. In 1987, she earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Howard University’s School of Communications. While attending Howard, she served as a news anchor for the campus radio station WHUR. In 2002, Whitfield was selected as the Howard University School of Communications Alumna of the Year.
After college, she worked in Miami, News Channel 8, Washington, D.C., Dallas, New Haven, Connecticut, and in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1995, Whitfield began as an NBC News correspondent and as an Atlanta-based correspondent for NBC Nightly News until 2001. In 1999, Whitfield married to John Glenn, the director of photography at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the couple has three children. She worked for other news programs at NBC, including Today; she was a morning and afternoon anchor and an assignment reporter.
Since joining CNN in 2002, Whitfield has covered several 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. Whitfield currently anchors CNN's weekend edition of CNN Newsroom from the network's world headquarters in Atlanta. In 2014, Whitfield's televised interview with comedian Joan Rivers ended abruptly when Whitfield criticized Rivers’ comedy as being mean-spirited and wearing vintage fur, despite Whitfield’s usage of leather shoes.
Whitfield acknowledged the controversy during a subsequent broadcast, calling her segment with Rivers "one of the most talked about interviews ending abruptly with an exit." In June 2015, Whitfield described a gunman who attacked police in Dallas, Texas, as "courageous and brave" on air when she thought he might be part of a coordinated terrorist attack. The next day she claimed she misspoke but made no formal apology for the initial statement. Whitfield issued a formal on-air apology the following day, saying she misused those words and was sincerely sorry.
