WASHINGTON — Asked how important is local news, Martha Raddatz, who has covered foreign conflicts for decades and moderated presidential debates for ABC News, said today that, in fact, “it is the seed of everything.” 

In a keynote interview at The Business of TV News event here, Raddatz told B+C Multichannel News senior content producer Michael Malone that her first reporting trip to Israel in 1988 was for WCVB, the ABC affiliate station in Boston. 

“Local news is everything,” she told Malone. “It is what people should be watching. It is what they should be learning about their community. It is your place in the larger national and world picture. And that is where it begins.”

Read More: Coverage From the Business of TV News Event

Raddatz, co-anchor of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, gave props to David Muir, anchor of the network’s World News Tonight and a fellow WCVB alum. “He connects to people not only on a national level, but a community level, a local level,” she said. “Your audience is local, national and worldwide, but it starts local.”

Asked about her own work, she spoke with pride about The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family, her book that became an eight-part scripted series for National Geographic TV. It chronicled the tragic experience of the U.S. Army soldiers who served during the siege of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2004. “I kept going back to the same unit in Iraq for their entire 15-month deployment,” she said, and also reported on the impact on their families back in the States. 

This past April 4, she said, she attended a 20th reunion of survivors of the “Black Sunday” events and their families.

Related: Martha Raddatz, 2022 'Woman of Influence,' Stays In The Field 

“Many I've stayed in touch with over the years,” she said. “And it was so powerful to see them. I think many of them have had real struggles. And as I said to all ofth'em, I think the courage it has taken to get you 20 years after that horrendous battle to where you are today and functioning and contributing to society is more courageous than what they actually did that very day.”

Asked by Malone if she was surprised when President Biden, who rarely gives interviews, went on the Howard Stern program recently, Raddatz said, "I was and I wasn't. Remember, [Biden's campaign] is now on TikTok, so he's clearly reaching out to younger voters. The bottom line for that interview is, look how many people listen to Howard Stern ... and the demographic of Howard Stern's audience. That's how campaigns choose where you'll go, what you'll do, whether you're going after mainstream media, whether you're going after younger voters. ... Whether or not it's successful, we'll see about that."

Raddatz was asked what advice she would give to an aspiring journalist. “Read history, study history, learn lessons from history, find journalists you think are journalists first,” she said. 

Aspiring broadcast journalists might want to be on TV, she said. “But you are a journalist first. And remember that mission. And remember also that you are storytellers.” If a story seems unappealing, find a different approach to it. “But I think more than anything, find people outside your building to talk to. Don't just talk among yourselves about things.”

The Business of TV News was a daylong event produced by Future B2B’s B+C, Multichannel News and Next TV.  

The Business of TV News, a new one-day event featuring Martha Raddatz, Shannon Bream, Glenn Kirschner and other major figures in television news, happens at Hotel Washington in our nation’s capital May 2. B+C, Multichannel News and NextTV are the hosts. 

The event (agenda here) is designed for everyone who works in local or national news, as it discusses election reporting, weather, multiplatform coverage and other timely topics. Register to attend the event here.

Raddatz, ABC News chief global affairs correspondent and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, delivers the opening keynote. Following that are panels on Election Coverage, from the on-air talent; The Growth of Local Programming, How Much Faster Can We Get Our News?, producer-focused Finding and Retaining Star-Producing Talent, and the midday keynote from Bream, the Fox News chief legal correspondent and Fox News Sunday anchor. 

After lunch, it’s a second panel about the election, this one from the executive perspective; then Beyond Broadcasting – The Pivotal Role of TV Networks, presented by CGTN America; then weather-focused panel Storm Troopers. 

Glenn Kirschner, NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst and host of Justice Matters on YouTube, delivers the closing keynote. 

Other speakers include David Chalian, CNN VP and political director; Ed O’Keefe, CBS News senior White House and political correspondent; Scott Livingston, senior VP of news, Sinclair Broadcast Group; Sean McLaughlin, VP of news, Graham Media Group; Angie Grande, senior director of streaming news channels, NBCUniversal Local; Gary Brown, CEO of Talent Dynamics; Adam Levy, executive producer and news editor, BBC News; and Angela Fritz, senior climate and weather editor, CNN. 

When the Biden administration was with­drawing troops from Afghanistan last summer, ABC chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz remained until the very end. She’d been shadowing U.S. Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller in those final days, and she hitched a ride out with him on the last helicopter out of Kabul. 

Just because Raddatz, who is being honored alongside the 2022 Multichannel News Wonder Women class as this year‘s Woman of Influence, has risen to high heights in the ABC News organization — she also co-anchors This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sundays — doesn’t mean she’s interested in spending any less time reporting the news from field assignments, even dangerous ones. If anything, her perch at the organization gives her more freedom to do the in-depth, complex stories about which she’s so passionate.

Also: ABC‘s Raddatz: News Media Are ‘Team of Rivals’

“I love what I do, I love it. I love it today as much as I loved it when I first started doing it,” said Raddatz, who has done everything at ABC News from covering the Middle East to moderating presidential debates to interviewing voters at a Trump rally. “It’s a disciplined curiosity — if you don’t remain curious, you aren’t going to love your job. That’s part of who I am. I love seeing the world and I have just met such fascinating, interesting people. It’s a gift. My job is a gift.”

Dax Tejera, executive producer of ABC’s This Week, called Raddatz “relentless in all the best ways. She’s a partner to a producer like myself. She’s constantly bringing ideas to the table. For someone at her level with her level of experience, her desire to go out and tell the story wherever that may be ­­— whether that’s wearing her global affairs hat or going out into the country to talk to voters ­— she never tires of it, she loves it. That’s a unique trait for someone who wears so many different hats.” 

Learned on the Job

Raddatz earned her journalism education on the job while working at a local TV station. She was one of the only local correspondents in the country to cover a global beat, traveling overseas to cover wars and conflicts. It was while she was working as chief correspondent at WCVB Boston that she began what became career-long coverage of the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I dropped out of college because I got a job at a local TV station, I had no idea what I wanted to do,” Raddatz said. “I’ve never been a person who was going to do this, that and the other. I wanted to succeed in my field and be a good journalist — journalism was always first for me, and TV was second. I always remembered that I was here to be a journalist and not just to be on TV.”

Outside of work, Raddatz has been married three times (her husband of 24 years is former NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten) and has raised two children, covering the news up to the very day she had her daughter, Greta Bradlee, in 1980. “I did two stories that day running around in a news van,” she said.

Her boss and coworkers told her she would not want to come back after she had kids, but she knew they were wrong. In fact, she returned to work just two weeks later. 

As with all women who have engrossing careers and also have families, balance wasn’t really on the table. It was more about managing risk and staying in close communication with her kids about what she was doing.

“My family, without question, my children and my husband, are of primary importance to me and what I can contribute is an understanding of conflict,” she said. “Maybe the balance is letting your kids know why you do what you do. I don’t cover wars because it’s a cool thing to do or to say, ‘Aren’t I brave?’ I cover wars so I can let people know what the cost is, so people will understand it more. The more my kids understood it, the more they accepted it.”  

Raddatz was raised by a single mom after her father passed away just shy of her third birthday. 

“My mother always said she was born 20 years too early,” Raddatz said. “She worked as a secretary and she raised two little girls by herself with zero help. Seeing what my mom did and knowing that my mom felt held back because she was a woman — we talked about it all the time, probably a little too much. Somehow that seeped into me. I thought, ‘By God, I’m doing to do whatever I want and never let being a woman stop me.’  ”

Setting No Limits

That work ethos has framed Raddatz’s career as she’s covered fields of conflict all over the world. From WCVB, Raddatz went to NPR, where she was the Pentagon correspondent from 1993-98. She joined ABC News as the State Department correspondent in 1999 and moved to national security correspondent in 2003. She also served as the network’s chief White House correspondent during the Bush administration. She was named senior foreign affairs correspondent after President Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

“If there’s a major story in the world, she gets to go first if she wants to go and to stay longer if she wants to,” Byron Pitts, co-anchor of Nightline and chief national correspondent for ABC News, said. The two have worked together on and off since they were both correspondents at WCVB in 1989. 

“When January 6 happened, Martha raised her hand like anybody in the D.C. bureau,” Pitts said. “One could make the argument that with her stature at this stage in her career, she could have offered context about that important story from her studio. But she wanted to be there in the mix-up. Some people in our business build their professional tan from studio lights. Others build their professional tan from the sun that shines around the world.”

Today, Raddatz says that while there are more women on the global-affairs beat, it can still be a challenging place for women, especially in countries where equality for women is not a priority. 

Also: Martha Raddatz‘s ‘Long Road’ to Scripted Television

“I still find myself in corridors of power where there are not a lot of women,” she said. “I’m not talking about my business or ABC, I’m talking about the places I cover. While there are many incredibly talented war correspondents out there, they are still largely men. And early on, when I went in with ground troops, there weren’t a lot of women with me.”

Earning Role-Model Status

As a result, Raddatz has served as an inspiration for many up-and-coming female journalists.

“Martha is someone I have always looked up to,” Rachel Scott, ABC News congressional correspondent, said. “I looked up to her long before I had an opportunity to meet her. I remember watching her press world leaders in some of the world’s most dangerous areas and provide context and analysis.

“When I first moved down to D.C., I had a big lump in my stomach about meeting her,” Scott said. “It made me so nervous. When I finally did meet her, she stopped me in the hallway and said, ‘Rachel, it’s so good to have you here in the newsroom, you’re doing great work.’ Since then, I have no idea why I was so nervous about meeting her. She is one of the kindest people I have ever met.

“She’s a mentor to so many young women coming up behind her,” she added. “No matter how high she climbs, she never forgets to reach back and pull others up with her.”

The current challenges Raddatz and her cohorts face are the constant attacks on journalists by those who would prefer them to relay a different narrative.

“The whole idea of fake news and the idea that the press is the enemy of the people is horrifying,” Raddatz said. “We as journalists continue to do our jobs and tell the truth and call out lies. It’s at the heart of what we do. It’s not opinion, it’s trying to find the truth and calling out those who are not.”

In the end, Raddatz feels hopeful about the role of journalism and its place in American democracy.

“I am optimistic about the news,” she said. “I think in so many ways that the charges of fake news and that the press is the enemy of the people has just made journalists that much more hard-core. Do-or-die journalists are just doubling down and saying ‘this is what I was born to do and I’m going to do it better than I ever have.’ ”

Those hard-core journalists have Raddatz to thank for paving the way. ■

Martha Raddatz, the chief global affairs correspondent for ABC News and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, will be honored as a Woman of Influence at the March 24, 2022, Wonder Women of New York luncheon. 

Raddatz, whose Iraq War nonfiction book The Long Road Home — a Story of War and Family was adapted into a 2017 miniseries on National Geographic Channel, is the latest high-profile woman in media saluted by Multichannel News as a Woman of Influence. Previous honorees include Deborah Norville, Connie Chung, Debra L. Lee, Hannah Storm and Lesley Stahl.

In addition to her extensive work overseas, starting in Bosnia in the late 1990s and most prominently in Iraq and Afghanistan, Raddatz has moderated vice presidential and presidential election debates and on Jan. 6, 2021, she reported from the Capitol grounds during the insurrection, when supporters of President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Her many accolades include the First Amendment Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation (RTDNF) for excellence in journalism and the prestigious Fred Friendly First Amendment Award. She has received four Emmy Awards, including an Emmy for being on the team covering the inauguration of Barack Obama and the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

Multichannel News has been saluting the leadership and excellence of women in media as Wonder Women since 1999. Wonder Women of New York is returning as a live, in-person event at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on Thursday, March 24. More about the Wonder Women event and honorees is available at mcnwonderwomen.com. ■

National Geographic tonight (Nov. 7) debuts it’s eight-part drama series The Long Road Home, which relives the 2004 "Black Sunday” ambush of a U.S. platoon in Bagdad during the Iraq War.

The series, based on journalist Martha Raddatz’s best-selling book, is the latest of several military-themed series to hit the TV airways in 2017, including NBC's The Brave, CBS’ SEAL Team, CW’s Valor and History’s Six.

MCN Review: 'The Long Road Home' an Effective, Realistic Military Drama [subscription required]

I recently spoke to Carolyn Bernstein, National Geographic executive vice president and head of global scripted development and production, about the network’s ambitious undertaking in developing the series. 

Here’s what Bernstein and Nat Geo want you to know about The Long Road Home.

The series offers a dramatic look at an historical event: “We feel like this is a bulls-eye television project for us in terms of what we’re looking to do with our scripted dramas initiative. We’re leading with the entertainment value, but everything that we do needs to have nutritional value as well. When you watch any scripted drama on Nat Geo we hope that you would be entertained but also enlightened and learn something about the world around you that you may not have known. For us, this was a story that deserved to be told in a complete and dramatic fashion that featured relatable and universal humanistic values."

The series adds context to a high profile incident during the Iraq War: Certainly people will remember the Iraq War and have a point of view about it, and they may remember specific incidents during the Iraq War. But this is a very deep dive into an incident that may have gone in one ear and out the other due to the way the 24-hour cable news cycle works. It’s a way to understand the Iraq War from a character-driven and human perspective. The Iraq War is very universally known, but we thought it was really important to shine a light on this less well-known incident as a way of understanding the larger war.”

The Long Road Home does not look to make a political statement: “We look at this show as being apolitical. It’s really about these people who have stories of their own to tell that have nothing to do with politics. Martha speaks very eloquently about this in saying  that this is about men who go from driving minivans one day to a couple of weeks later finding themselves in a combat situation in Iraq, and having to find their determination, grit, resilience, courage and brotherhood to get through it. For us it’s really about the sacrifice and the courage that these men showed in the face of terrible adversity. It exists outside of the political and it feels timeless … it’s always a good time to tell this type of story.”

Watch the Trailer: Nat Geo's 'The Long Road Home'