Forrest Sawyer
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| Forrest Sawyer | |
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| Born | April 19, 1949 Lakeland, Florida |
Forrest DeWitt Sawyer (born April 19, 1949) is an American former broadcast journalist best known for his 11 years with ABC News, where he anchored ABC World News Tonight Saturday and frequently substituted for Ted Koppel on Nightline. During that time he earned Emmy Awards in 1992, 1993, and 1994 while with ABC-TV's Day One and Nightline. He left ABC News to become a news anchor for both NBC and its cable counterpart, MSNBC, where he was an occasional substitute for Brian Williams as anchor for The News with Brian Williams. He left NBC News in 2005 to become founder and president of Freefall Productions, where he produces documentaries and serves as a media strategist and guest lecturer.
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[edit] Biography
Sawyer was born in Lakeland, Florida. He is a 1967 graduate of Kathleen High School in Lakeland, Florida and an alumnus of the University of Florida, holding a BA in Arts and Sciences and a master's in education. He also was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at UF.
After starting in radio, Sawyer moved into television with Atlanta's WAGA-TV, a CBS affiliate while he was there from 1980 to 1985. While at WAGA, Sawyer shared a Peabody Award in 1982, for Paradise Saved, a documentary on Cumberland Island. He, Don Smith, and photographer George Gentry were cited for a documentary in which viewers were "treated to a quality of visual beauty not often seen on television and, at the same time, were informed, enlightened, and challenged concerning the problems of retaining a great natural heritage and a diminishing resource—the unspoiled beauty of the Atlantic Coast."[1]
In 1985 he took over as anchorman on the CBS Morning News, holding that position until 1987. He joined ABC in 1988 as anchorman of ABC World News This Morning and also hosted "World News Sunday" and "Day One." Sawyer also served as a regular subsitute anchor on "World News Tonight" and "Nightline." before leaving that network and joining NBC. In addition to his Peabody Award, he has received a total of seven National Emmy Awards, two Sigma Delta Chi Awards, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, an Associated Press Award, an Ohio State Award, an Ark Award and two American Psychological Association Awards.
He was a guest speaker at the American Association of Community Colleges Conference in Long Beach, CA, during April 2006 and was keynote speaker on May 11, 2007 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at a conference titled, "The Future of Multi-Media Digital News and Cultural Networks."
In late 2007, while filming a documentary in Tanzania, he survived a helicopter crash. Sawyer rescued a Maasai villager from the wreckage, and, with an injured knee, carried another man several miles across a toxic lake to safety.
[edit] Pop culture trivia
- Sawyer played himself as moderator in "The Debate" an episode of The West Wing which aired live and was dedicated solely to a debate between two fictitious presidential candidates.
