Janene Drafs runs a truly extraordinary content-production outfit. KTLA Los Angeles, part of Nexstar Media Group, cranks out a staggering 112 hours a week of local programming, among the highest levels in the nation. It is local from 4 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. weekdays. After The CW primetime, it’s another 90 minutes of local news. 

Drafs was named KTLA GM in 2020, succeeding the retiring Don Orsini, who was something of an L.A. television legend. She previously was VP and general manager at KOMO-KUNS Seattle, where she began her career as an account executive in 1992.

Also Read: Wonder Women of Los Angeles 2024: Honoring the West’s Best

Drafs, who is the B+C Multichannel News 2024 Los Angeles-based Woman of Influence, spoke about being the first female GM at KTLA, the loss of beloved colleague Sam Rubin and how she helps young women in television work toward leadership roles. An edited transcript follows. 

B+C MCN: Can KTLA’s 112 weekly hours of local possibly go up, or is that the magic number?

Janene Drafs: I think for now it’s the magic number, but [OTT product] KTLA Plus is such an amazing opportunity for us. That’s where we have been developing more programs. 

B+C: The station recently lost a beloved colleague in [entertainment anchor] Sam Rubin. Tell me what he was like. 

JD: While Sam loved entertaining and loved Hollywood, he was really a journalist. It’s what endeared him to his colleagues who are also journalists. He was a fantastic writer. He had an incredible wit. I think he was the class clown, but in the very best way. To be funny, you have to be really, really, really smart. And Sam was really, really, really smart.

B+C: When you took this job in 2020, you became the first female GM in KTLA history. What was the feeling when you were coming on board? Excitement? Anxiety?

JD: I knew that there had been other female general managers in the market, and I came from a market that also had one other female general manager. So I wasn’t intimidated. On my first day I said, ‘I can’t be Don Corsini. I’m never going to be the person who was here before me because I lean in a different way. We’ll get to know one another and you’ll figure out how that works for you.’ Don was definitely an iconic person, but I just needed to make sure everyone knew that I wasn’t going to try and be the same person. 

B+C: Who’s been a mentor for you in your career?

JD: Colleen Brown, who was the CEO of Fisher Broadcasting before [KOMO-KUNS was] purchased by Sinclair. [Former Graham Media Group president and CEO] Emily Barr and I met at an industry conference and right away we hit it off. She would be the person that I would call with strategic things, when I was struggling with something, when I had some ideas and needed someone to bounce them off of.

In the GM role, it’s really hard to find colleagues. You can’t have those kinds of conversations with your employees. So we all have to have those people that we reach out to. 

BC: How do you help a young woman who might someday want to be a GM?

JD: Representation is so important. When I was growing up, I played guitar, and I never thought that I could play an electric guitar. Then I saw Heart, Ann and Nancy Wilson, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Women?’ I don’t know why I didn’t think I could do it, but it was all about representation.

Seeing females in leadership roles is the very first step, because that means females can envision themselves in leadership.

The second thing is to have that board of directors for yourself. Who is that person who’s going to call you on your BS, call you when you’re not being real? That might be a really good friend that you’ve grown up with who knows you well, it might be a sister or a brother. It’s going to be someone who knows you well, who doesn’t mince words, who knows you’re not going to take it personally. 

That’s what I encourage young women to do — find people who will be your advocate. Find people who tell you what you don’t want to tell yourself. When people who are too close to you are telling you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear, have that other person who is just your 100% go-to for solv-i­ng prob­­lems. 

Janene Drafs, VP and general manager of KTLA Los Angeles, is the 2024 Multichannel News Woman of Influence, to be honored at the Wonder Women of Los Angeles celebration. The first female GM in KTLA history when she took over in 2020, Drafs oversees an extraordinary station. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, KTLA airs a whopping 112 hours a week of local programming. Weekday news goes 4 a.m. to 2 p.m. After a daily talk show, it’s local news until 7 p.m., and again after The CW primetime.  

"It’s especially rewarding to  be recognized among such talented and respected women in media," Drafs said.  

Viewers have a wide array of content choices available to them on an array of platforms, but Drafs says what’s happening in their community often has the most relevance. “I came up through the business side of this industry, but I have come to love and appreciate the news side and the content side,” she said. 

With the vast majority of KTLA’s programming produced in-house, Drafs spoke about “having the most control we can at the local level,” to best serve Los Angeles viewers. 

Drafs will be toasted at the Wonder Women of Los Angeles event, June 18 at The Ebell in Los Angeles. Fifteen female executives in television, representing the best and brightest in the business, will be celebrated at the gala breakfast. In addition, LaKendra Davis Moxie, VP of fulfillment operations at Cox Communications, will be honored as The WICT Network of Southern California's Catalyst Award winner at the event.

Giselle Fernandez, Spectrum News 1 anchor, was the 2023 Woman of Influence at Wonder Women of Los Angeles. Holly Robinson Peete, actress, producer and talk show host, was the Woman of Influence in 2022, and Deborah Norville, anchor of Inside Edition, got the honor in 2021. 

The year may only be a few months old, but GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis already has a lot to celebrate.

Ellis, who will be presented with the 2024 Woman of Influence award as part of the Multichannel News Wonder Women of New York celebration on March 21, recently marked her 10th anniversary as the head of the nonprofit LGBTQ advocacy group. Her efforts in leading the organization’s charge to create initiatives, campaigns and programs pushing for the fair and accurate media coverage of the LGBTQ community earned GLAAD the TV Academy’s 2023 Governors Award during the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards on January 15. 

Yet the former Condé Nast and Time Inc. executive and married mother of two teenage children has no plans to sit on her laurels. Ellis and GLAAD were set to honor Oprah Winfrey and Niecy Nash-Betts during the organization’s 35th annual GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles on March 14, the first of two awards ceremonies for the
nonprofit. The second will take place in New York on May 11. 

Ellis will also continue to guide GLAAD’s mandate for greater inclusion in media through the GLAAD Media Institute, which was established in 2018 to foster the organization’s research into LGBTQ representation and acceptance. 

GLAAD will also look to expand LGBTQ advocacy efforts more aggressively into the social media and gaming platforms, in an effort to make sure that all media offer a true and accurate representation of the LGBTQ and transgender communties, Ellis said. 

Ahead of the Wonder Women of New York awards luncheon March 21 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan, Ellis talked about her goals for GLAAD, her accomplishments and disappointments through her decade-long tenure, and why her family life means that she takes her work personally. Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation. 

MCN: Over the past decade, how far has the entertainment industry come in terms of its acceptance and inclusion of the LGBTQ community? 

Sarah Kate Ellis: I think our role with media — whether it be TV shows or streaming or journalism — has gone from a watchdog to more of a partnership as the culture has changed. We’ve moved into more of a partnership with the media. I’ll also say that as new forms of media, like social media, have grown and evolved, we’ve taken on more watchdog roles. So with traditional media, including streaming, I would say that our relationship has grown in a positive direction. With other, newer platforms, we’ve had to take more of a watchdog advisory role in those spaces. 

MCN: With that, has GLAAD changed its focus on the audience it wants to reach? 

SKE: What never changes is our audience, and our audience has consistently been what is “the movable middle,” those folks who understand the humanity of our community but might not have the education or information about our community. How we reach them has changed dramatically. We’ve also shifted our focus more toward the transgender community. About 90% of Americans say they know somebody who’s lesbian or gay or bisexual, but only 30% of Americans say they know somebody who is transgender. So our focus has shifted in a way around transgender and nonconforming folks, and helping to educate people about who they are as their visibility has grown through TV, theater and on video games and other various media platforms. 

MCN: Last month, GLAAD was honored with the Television Academy’s Governor’s Award at the Emmys. What did that recognition mean to you personally and to the organization? 

SKE: We’re going to be 40 years old next year, so that was a true recognition for what our founders set out to do, which was to increase the visibility of the LGBTQ community through television. And so to be recognized by the Television Academy with their Governor’s Award was a full-circle moment for the organization. And personally, having spent the last 10 years at the organization and making it a bigger partner with Hollywood by increasing storytelling, it was, for me, a moment of real validation.

MCN: During your acceptance speech, you said that GLAAD’s advocacy efforts are personal to you and your family. How does your work at GLAAD influence and gratify you on a personal level? 

SKE: For me, I came to GLAAD when my kids were 4. Being married to a woman and bringing kids into this world, I thought it was my duty to create a better tomorrow and protect my family. In my opinion, there is no better place to do that than GLAAD and all of the work that the organization does. So for me, it’s been personal since day one of accepting the job, and it’s why I accepted the job. One of our rally cries at GLAAD is, ‘it’s personal,’ and for everyone at the organization, it means the world to us to be able to do the work that we’re doing to protect our community and advance acceptance for our community. 

MCN: What has been your biggest accomplishment during your 10 years at GLAAD?

SKE: I would say creating the GLAAD Media Institute, because that has enabled us to scale our work in an unprecedented way and has increased our impact tremendously. The institute works as an adviser for Fortune 500 companies, all the major gaming companies and the major studios. We’re embedded in over a dozen Hollywood projects at any given time. Through the institute, we do a TV report and recently released our gaming report. So it’s a consultancy, a think tank and an advocacy arm on the ground, both local and globally, where we work with LGBTQ activists. 

MCN: How about your biggest disappointment? 

SKE: I think the backlash we’ve seen recently has been the biggest disappointment. When I started at GLAAD we didn’t have marriage equality yet, and pretty quickly after we were able to achieve that. To think that all of the accomplishments we had made in becoming a more equal, just and accepting society are now so fragile. How quickly they are being rolled back is my biggest disappointment. 

(Editor’s note: Ellis later said she was referring to recent state legislation and local and federal court rulings she said were harmful to LGBTQ people and other diverse communities, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, rulings on voting rights and more than 500 state-level anti-LGBTQ bills introduced last year, as well as to the group’s effort to mobilize to pass the federal Respect for Marriage Act after conservative Supreme Court justices signaled a potential rollback of rulings affirming the legality of same-sex marriage.) 

MCN: What goals have you set for yourself and GLAAD in 2024? 

SKE: We have some strategic initiatives set for next year. One of them has been really focusing on the gaming industry. No. 2 is our work on the election. We want to work through the media to make sure that it is accountable and to make sure that the candidates are being asked LGBTQ questions, and that any kind of LGBTQ conversations that come up are accurate and real and not misinformative. We also want to ensure that every LGBTQ person that’s eligible is registered to vote and has a plan to go to vote. We’ve been doing that work since 2018 and it’s been incredibly successful. 

I would say third is making sure that trans stories are being told across the board. We’re on the ground now in Oklahoma where there was the beating death of a young, gender-nonconforming person named Nex. [Nex Benedict, a nonbinary 16-year-old student, died February 8 after they were beaten up in a women’s room at their high school in Owasso, Oklahoma, according to published reports.]  

The negative forces against our community have grown and been emboldened, especially over the past six to seven years. The use of media platforms to distribute misinformation and disinformation about our community and targeting our community has led to an onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation that we’ve never seen the likes of. We want to make sure that Nex’s story is being told, and that the world sees the culture that’s being created by anti-LGBTQ activists and what it’s doing to our youth. 

Giselle Fernandez, local and national network news anchor for more than four decades and current anchor at Spectrum News 1 in Southern California, made a plea for telling "stories that inspire" and "transcend the noise" in order to win back viewers and help the country.

"The intersection of media and politics is more weaponized than it has ever been," Fernandez said in accepting the as a "Woman of Influence" at the Wonder Women of Los Angeles ceremony on June 20. "And you know, those algorithms on those competing social media microsites, they play to that rage and that hate, and it's good for business even if it's tearing our country apart. But I can tell you from my experience of late, and it's been a hard time for all of us, stories that inspire, allow you to see the best in each other [are] also good for business. People are craving stories that inspire, give you hope, uplift and remind us we are good too. That we are more alike than we are different. I know firsthand this because our viewers tell us every single day."

Also: Woman of Influence Giselle Fernandez Sets the Tone in City of Angels

Fernandez anchors Your Morning on Spectrum News 1 and hosts L.A. Stories With Giselle Fernandez, the interview program she said enabled her to be doing "the most fulfilling work of my career in my sixth decade."

Fernandez said her mother, who once recorded oral histories in Mexico as part of a PhD project, taught her that "every human being, no matter who they are, where they come from, has a story to tell. And those stories tell us all a lot about who we are, where we're going." 

Fernandez, who earlier in her career worked for both CBS News and NBC News, said she always wanted to be a reporter. And as a reporter she has seen the good, the bad and the ugly of humanity. But her experience lately has left her with hope for a unifying effect from sharing experiences through storytelling. 

"People are craving stories that inspire, give you hope, uplift and remind us we are good, too," she said. "That we are more alike than we are different. I know firsthand this because our viewers tell us every single day. Getting this award made me think a lot about not only how I use my influence with the stories that we share, but the people I interview also have this immense power to influence by sharing their most intimate life stories of redemption, innovation, transformation, how they survive horrors and turn tragedy into triumph. How they've changed their lives, that of their communities. These stories move people, they inspire and remind us of the possible. And this is where I so believe we tap into our shared humanity. That's where real influence lies. Especially today. I feel so blessed because I'm given the time, the platform thanks to Spectrum, which is so rare these days to have a long-form interview show where we can really listen to where someone's coming from."

She continued: "It's about being more human than we've ever been and seeing, as my mom said early on, there is dignity in every being. If there was ever a time for all of us to share stories that open hearts, widen the aperture to different views, find common ground, the time for that is now."

Fernandez said she felt lucky to be in position to help shape a news broadcast after having been away from a TV newsroom for a long time before Spectrum News 1 launched in Southern California in 2018.

"I had been out of the news business for about 15 years and I was told by mostly men running networks and studios that I was past my prime," she recalled. "The business had changed. It just takes one person to believe in you. And that person is here today. Her name is Cater Lee [V.P., Original Programming and On-Air Talent Development, Spectrum Networks Southern California]. She's the titan force that built Spectrum News 1 from scratch. Understanding the trust in hyper-local coverage, that relationship and bond with viewer matters, that trust matters. Good solid journalism matters. When she called and asked if I wanted to come back to news, I literally was like, 'Do you know I'm 57?' " Lee's response was: I certainly do. When can you come in?

"That was five years ago," Fernandez said. "Because of her, I get to do the most fulfilling work of my career in my sixth decade."

Giselle Fernandez, set to be honored as the 2023 Woman of Influence at the Wonder Women of Los Angeles breakfast June 20, anchors Your Morning on Spectrum News 1 in Los Angeles, and hosts L.A. Stories With Giselle Fernandez. 

Before her time at Spectrum News 1, Fernandez worked at both CBS News and NBC News, including anchoring the Sunday NBC Nightly News. 

Fernandez has sat with Fidel Castro, President Bill Clinton and President George H.W. Bush, among other global luminaries, in her career. She also produced the documentary Our Story, which addressed healthcare issues for children of low-income Hispanic families. She competed in the second season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars.

Ahead of the Multichannel News Wonder Women awards at the Sofitel Hotel in Beverly Hills, Fernandez spoke about her career highlights, mentors and how she unwinds after a hectic day. 

An edited transcript follows.

MCN: What are you most proud of these days?

Giselle Fernandez: We made it through the pandemic. We made it through really trying times in newsrooms across the country where you have volatile politics, a pandemic, school closures and mass shootings almost every other day. There have been so many assaults on our democracy, on our society, on our humanity. I’m really proud we were able to keep our eye on storytelling. 

MCN: What’s a recent story you did that you’re particularly proud of?

GF: I went to Guatemala to cover the root causes of migration. With the global migration crisis across the country here at home, thousands deluging on our southern border and weaponized politics around the human crisis, Spectrum sent me to Guatemala to cover [Vice President] Kamala Harris going there [and] to look at the root causes. That was a great example of how we take on a global national story but really localize it. 

MCN Tell me about your documentary, Our Story. 

GF: That was so long ago, but it’s something where, when I die, it will be one of the things I'm most proud of. I used to sit on the board of Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and I was on the air at KTLA at the time. A little boy who had cancer recognized me. His name was Dusty, and he was 11 and wanted to meet me. We ended up shooting him for months as he grappled with his illness, and his family grappled with access to healthcare. 

I don't know if it was a twist of fate or if it was my destiny, but my then-husband's entire family came to the hospital with his 16-month-old grandson. I was like, what are you doing here? They wheeled his grandson into the room with Dusty. He was diagnosed with liver cancer at 16 months old. I covered both of them and started to cover all the other children on the floor.

MCN: Have you had a mentor in your career?

GF: Many. In terms of a literary mentor, there’s a woman named Oriana Fallaci, who was a speak-truth-to-power Italian journalist. My mom has been a mentor. She followed her passion and didn’t let anybody define her. She was born in New York to a progressive Jewish family and decided she did not like the debutante, concrete jungle, society world. She heard flamenco and mariachi music and decided that her soul was a Latina. And she ended up going to Mexico, taking a flamenco dancing class with someone like 40 years older than she was, a very famous flamenco dancer. They married and I was born, a Mexican-Jewish girl. 

MCN: Do you mentor aspiring journalists?

GF: Absolutely. [News director] Jeff Wald gave me my start in television at KTLA when I was in my 20s. He teaches a class at UCLA and always asks me to be the final speaker to his graduate students. I'm proud to go every year. 

I also mentor the smart young women and men at Spectrum — especially women because we’re so very challenged, never thinking we're good enough. 

MCN: Tell me about your L.A. Stories program.

GF: I love my L.A. Stories program! We're an Instagram, TikTok, soundbite society. No one wants long form, and the only one really left is 60 Minutes. I said, ‘Yeah, I know, but I really want to do it.’ And Spectrum said, ‘Then do it.’ 

I've had the time of my life. I think it's the best work of my career. It gives me an opportunity to delve into the minds and hearts of change-makers, thought leaders, innovators, celebrities and just people making an impact in their communities.

MCN: How do you unwind from the stress of your job?

GF: I drink a lot of tequila. [Laughs.] I’m a huge animal lover. We hike a lot. I’m a big runner. I love nature. My daughter and I love art. We travel and we love music. I just saw Bruno Mars. I’m a huge Bruno Mars fan and his concert was to die for!

Giselle Fernandez, Spectrum News 1 anchor in Southern California, has been named 2023 Woman of Influence by Multichannel News and will be celebrated at the Tuesday, June 20, Wonder Women of Los Angeles breakfast event at the Sofitel Hotel Los Angeles.

Fernandez, a former correspondent and anchor for national CBS News and NBC News programs, has been an anchor at Charter Communications's Spectrum News 1 in Southern California since the channel launched in 2018. Among many career milestones, she's interviewed Fidel Castro, Henry Kissinger and presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. She's co-hosted Access Hollywood and This Week in History on The History Channel. A seven-time Emmy winner, she was a reporter and anchor at KTLA in Los Angeles early in her career. 

Previous Woman of Influence honorees include CBS Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan (2023, in New York); Martha Raddatz, chief global affairs correspondent for ABC News and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos; actress and author Holly Robinson Peete; Deborah Norville, anchor of Inside Edition; and Debra L. Lee, BET (Black Entertainment Television) CEO emeritus. 

Wonder Women of Los Angeles opens up the Future U.S. TV-industry events series L.A. TV Week. Other events at the Sofitel Hotel Los Angeles June 20-21 are the Advanced Advertising and Next TV summits and 40 under 40. Hosts for the Wonder Women event will be announced soon. More information is at latvweekevents.com.

Margaret Brennan, moderator of Face the Nation, has been named 2023’s Woman of Influence by Multi­channel News. Brennan became moderator of the CBS public-affairs program in 2018. She’s also chief foreign affairs correspondent at CBS News. 

Brennan joined CBS News in 2012 and has been State Department and White House correspondent. Prior to that, she worked at Bloomberg Tele­vision and CNBC.

Brennan said the “amazing group of women” at Face the Nation has some serious influence. All three senior producers, Anne Hsu, Avery Miller and Carol Ross Joynt, as well as executive producer Mary Hager and tech manager Laura Foran, are women. “l do think of it as a group of wonder women behind Face the Nation,” Brennan said. 

Based in Washington, Brennan will be celebrated at Multichannel News’s Wonder Women luncheon March 23 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York. She spoke about covering the nation’s lawmakers and newsmakers the day after President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. An edited transcript follows. 

MCN: Is Face the Nation a different show during the Biden presidency than it was during Trump’s reign?

Margaret Brennan: I think the heart and soul of who we are is the same. In many ways, the end of the Trump presidency, during the pandemic, reminded us of who we are. And it gave me real clarity on who we need to be and the service that we need to provide. So I still try to keep that front and center, in my thinking and how I approach interviews and even just how we curate topics. 

The momentum of the news hasn’t slowed too dramatically. There are still really huge issues that are not specific to the man in the office, but to where the world is at this moment. Those things still loom large. We are still doing a fair amount of national security and a lot less on health policy than during the worst of the pandemic, but we’re still trying to remain true to the value we provide in helping to keep people informed.

MCN: Do you have a highlight going back over the last year or so, a moment that broke some major news or crystallized what the show’s all about?

MB: I had an interview in October [2022] right before the election with [House Majority Whip] Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who was on the program talking about what was about to happen with the election. It was in this moment, right after Paul Pelosi had been attacked in his home and at the same moment that U.S. officials were warning us about the risk of political violence. And that just felt incredibly important. 

I don’t like it when politics are covered like it’s ESPN — it’s not who’s up, who’s down, who won. These are people’s lives. The words we use and the way we use them, particularly at key moments, is so key. And that just felt like one of those moments. 

I had a fairly tough exchange with [Emmer] about how he was communicating to fellow Republicans what is acceptable in terms of rhetoric, and the use of weapons specifically in social media — why do you need to put a gun in a political ad or in a tweet when the tweet has nothing to do at all with guns? All the veiled threats. 

I think that was a moment that encapsulated a lot of where we were in terms of anxiety for the country.

On the cusp of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I’m proud of how we covered that. And we’ve remained dedicated to covering that and all the parts of that conflict that impact the world — not just the battleground, but what’s happening in the economy, what’s happening with food security. 

The week leading up to the conflict, I had a pretty tough exchange with the Russian ambassador, who was on February 20, saying, absolutely no invasion. And then four days later, there you go. 

We had [Ukraine] President [Volody­myr] Zelenskyy on in April, and it was right after the Ukrainians had retaken the areas around Kyiv and the massacres in Bucha had just been discovered. We woke up that morning to a lot of the first images from that, and that was the same morning we had the president of Ukraine on. And he just was so passionate and angry about what he had just witnessed done to his people, having gone to those front lines and seeing it. The world was horrified at that moment. It was the very first time he used the term genocide to describe what was happening. It really focused in on what was happening, the idea of a land war in Europe in this moment, with that kind of brutality. 

MCN: It’s five years for you in this role. Does it feel like five years? 

MB: I think about the show in terms of my children, because I was pregnant with my first son when I got the job. It exhilarated and terrified me horribly in the same moment. [Laughs.] So when I hear it, I’m like, ‘gosh, my eldest son is literally in parallel to the show,’ and I think of the show as my child. 

In many ways, it doesn’t feel like the baby’s that old. [Laughs.] It doesn’t feel like it has been that long. But if you look at the amount of history that we have covered in our five years, it’s pretty incredible. I certainly didn’t expect that. When I slipped into the moderator role, we were in the still very chaotic part of the Trump administration, pre-pandemic. I had been a White House correspondent for the Obama administration and the Trump administration, and I had gotten used to that frenetic pace. And I anticipated that for the show. But I didn’t anticipate the gravity of the world-changing events that we would cover. 

In such a short period of time, the velocity of the news and the weight of what we were covering, with the worst global pandemic in a century, the misinformation/
disinformation that really cost people their lives, the racial justice protests that exploded in this capital city into violence and [the] January 6 [attack on the U.S. Capitol] having happened.

We thought we were in an incredibly intense news environment, and then it just kept picking up. So it feels like we’ve covered about a decade in five years. I probably have some gray hair from that. 

MCN: How has the show evolved over your five years on it?

MB: I think that we have remained true to the sensibilities, the continuity. The executive producer, Mary Hager, has helped that to a large extent. I also just was making that transition from being a correspondent into the moderator, and I’d been an anchor before. But this was just a different kind of interview at a moment in time that has felt incredibly important. And so coming into a place of comfort with all of that, and figuring out how to do all of that and manage it in a way that isn’t overwhelming for our viewers, in a way that helps them better understand and at times when often we’re trying to understand it ourselves as we report it out, that takes time. 

I feel like we did hit our stride during the pandemic, certainly, but continuing now. I feel like I’ve changed, but the sensibility of the show remains true to just that, those same foundational things we talked about when I stepped into it, which was context, perspective, civil conversation — things that I fundamentally believe we have to bring back as a country.

MCN: What do you do to unwind? 

MB: Well, I have a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old and a pretty crazy job, so there’s not a lot of downtime. I work out. I try to spend my Mondays, which is my weekend, spend some quality time with my 4-year-old when he comes home from school because I don’t get him on weekends. While my older son’s at school, I spend time with my 2-year-old. It’s literally coaching my 2-year-old on how to say words.

MCN: I’m guessing you have a good green room story — two guests before the show, after the show, screaming at each other or coming to peace. Something we don’t get to see on the show.

MB: One of the things that I remember, it’s like embedded here as this oh-my-gosh moment, was having the secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, who doesn’t do interviews very often; the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. [Oksana Markarova], who is a friend of the show; and the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., [Qin Gang], who is now the foreign minister. Huge bookings, but it was literally trying to avoid a diplomatic incident, having them in different parts of the building. 

After my interview with the Chinese ambassador, where I was pressing him on his country not completely denouncing what had happened with Russia’s choices in attacking Ukraine, the Ukrainian ambassador buttonholed him on his way out.

That stood out to me. I was like, ‘Gosh, I really want to know what happened in that conversation while I was in the studio.’ ▪️

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. ■

Emmy Award winning TV journalist Deborah Norville, anchor of top-rated daily newsmagazine Inside Edition, will be honored with the Woman of Influence award from Multichannel News at the 2021 Wonder Women Los Angeles virtual event on June 7. 

As Woman of Influence, Norville will headline the event honoring a group of 15 high-performing women executives in TV, streaming, advertising and more. Previous Women of Influence have included Lesley Stahl, Connie Chung, Debra L. Lee and Hannah Storm. The virtual event will be hosted by Giselle Fernandez, anchor at Spectrum News 1 in Los Angeles, and Yarel Ramos, news anchor at Univision 34 Los Angeles's Edición Digital California.

"With a career spanning over 40 years, Deborah Norville truly embodies everything that this award represents," Bill Gannon, VP of Content and Global Editor-in-Chief of Future plc's Media and Entertainment brands, including Multichannel News, Broadcasting+Cable and NextTV. "Deborah's storied broadcast journalism has paved the way for countless women in media, and her work for the Broadcasters Foundation of America and other organizations has been inspirational and impacted countless lives. We are proud to recognize her as a Woman of Influence."

Norville joined Inside Edition in 1995 from CBS News, where she was anchor and correspondent. Prior to joining CBS News she was a co-host of NBC’s Today and, before that, anchor of NBC News at Sunrise. During her career she also has hosted the primetime Deborah Norville Tonight on MSNBC, the national Deborah Norville Show on the ABC Talk Radio Network and been an anchor and reporter for WMAQ-TV in Chicago. She began her reporting career at WAGA-TV in Atlanta while still a student at the University of Georgia, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude, First Honor Graduate with a perfect 4.0 GPA.

Inside Edition is among the top TV shows in first-run syndication and reaches a daily audience of approximately 5 million viewers. While at Inside Edition, her coverage has included broadcasting from the scene of some of the biggest news stories, including Washington, D.C., on Sept 11, 2001; the funerals of President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul the Second; the inauguration of President Barack Obama and the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton. 

Norville also is a best-selling author and lecturer. She serves on the board of the Broadcasters Foundation of America. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Women Corporate Directors and the New York Women’s Forum. She is a past board member of the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York and the Rita Hayworth (Alzheimer’s) Steering Committee. She is married and the mother of three. 

In November, 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl sat down with then-President-elect Donald Trump for his first interview since his surprising election win over Hillary Clinton. Being in front of a breaking story is nothing new for the 40-year broadcast news veteran.

From her prominent coverage of the Watergate affair as a CBS reporter in 1972; to her stint as a CBS White House correspondent during the Carter, Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations; to her stint as moderator of Sunday-morning staple Face the Nation from 1983-91; to her 26-year run on 60 Minutes, Stahl has set a standard for future women — and men — in journalism. She has earned 12 Emmy Awards and, in 2015, she received the Paul White Award for lifetime achievement from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).

Stahl, the recipient of the inaugural Multichannel News Woman of Influence award, reflected on her career in an interview with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead. Stahl — whose most recent book, Becoming Grandma, will be released in paperback form in advance of Mother’s Day — also opines on the challenges that women reporters have experienced over the last four decades, as well as what broadcast journalism might look like in the future.

Following is an edited excerpt of their wide-ranging conversation.

Read More >Celebrating Media's Influential Women: The 'MCN' Wonder Women Class of 2017|Meet 2017's 12 'MCN' Women to Watch|The 'MCN' Wonder Women Online Archive

MCN:When you started your career in broadcast journalism more than 40 years ago, did you ever think that you would have achieved as much as you have?

Lesley Stahl: When I started back in the very early ’70s, it was kind of a rule of thumb for some that women would not survive on television past the age of 40. It was just a given — women will not be able to age on television. Everybody believed it; I believed it. That’s just the way it was. So the answer to your question is you no, I never thought I’d survive. I thought I’d have to go and find something else to do after I turned 40.

MCN:What was the turning point that changed things so women journalists like yourself could have long and rewarding TV careers?

LS: The women’s rights movement was just beginning to bubble up when I started out in this profession. My timing was exquisite — when I was hired by CBS News In 1972, I was working at a local television station in Boston at that point. In 1972, the word went out that affirmative action was in effect, and all three network-television news organizations were literally scouring the country for women and minorities. I heard about this and applied, so I think my timing was excellent. The early ’70s was the first wave and there have been waves and waves ever since.

MCN:How do you think women newscasters are viewed today, by the industry and by the public in general?

LS: I think they’re pretty used to it now. If you go to virtually any local market in the country and turn on your television at around 5 or 6 o’clock at night you’re probably going to see a man and a woman sitting there together giving the news, and in some markets, it’s just a woman. The sea change is enormous. I think that people don’t even think about it anymore.

MCN:A lot of people will attribute much of the success of today’s female newscasters to trail you blazed over your career. Were there certain events or certain stories that you covered that really stand out in your mind?

LS: Well, I think there were some breaks that I got. When CBS first hired me in April of 1972, the Watergate burglary happened. Now nobody, I mean nobody, thought that was going to be a national story. I had only been there a couple months and they sent me off to cover Watergate. That was probably my major break, and because I was assigned to a story that lasted for years. I was able to learn how to develop sources, investigate and dig, which I think reporters in the beginning of their careers don’t get a chance to do because they’re shuttled from one story to the next story.

MCN:What advice would you give to a young woman journalist looking to get into the business today?

LS: I’d say start out on the Web. You have to learn how to be a different kind of correspondent than I was because you’re probably not going to have the kind of backup I did. As a broadcast reporter, I’ve always had a camera pool and a producer travel with me — this was true when I covered the White House; it’s true today at 60 Minutes. If you’re a reporter online, you’re basically by yourself — you’re shooting the story yourself, you’re editing the story yourself, you’re doing everything — you’re what we call a one-man band. Journalism will not work the way it looks today, and broadcast journalists will not go about getting their stories out the way we do and did. It’s changed already. I’m just very lucky that I’m still at one of the few outlets that does it the old-fashioned way.

MCN:What’s next in the career of Lesley Stahl?

LS: Well, you know, 60 Minutes is this precious, separate little entity but it’s still extremely popular. Our ratings are very strong and because of that we really do journalism the old-fashioned way in many ways. Because we’re still very popular I don’t think we’re going to be going away all that soon, so that’s all good for me personally, and good for the country too because I think there is a hunger for what we do.

I think that people who are considering what journalism will look like on the Web ought to keep in mind that there is a huge audience for long, well-informed, well-reported, story-telling stories.