John Yang

​John Yang is an award-winning journalist who now covers the Trump White House—the third President he’s covered daily—for PBS NewsHour. He’s reported from across the United States, war zones around the world, the floors of presidential nominating conventions and, since 1982, congressional and presidential campaigns. At NewsHour since 2016, he covered the presidential campaign. He was a floor correspondent at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and reported from Hillary Clinton’s Election Night headquarters in New York.

 

He had joined the nightly, national newscast the NBC News Chicago bureau, where covered a variety of stories for "NBC Nightly News," "Today" and MSNBC. He contributed to the NBC News project "In Plain Sight: Poverty in America," which was awarded a 2013 George Foster Peabody Award.

 

His coverage of the deadly April 2011 outbreak of tornadoes in Alabama was part of an "NBC Nightly News" honored with the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award. In 2012, he was the lead correspondent for NBC News’ coverage of the sex abuse trial of former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky. He has also reported from Afghanistan.

 

Previously, Yang was based in Washington, where he was White House correspondent. He was part of the NBC News team honored with an Emmy for coverage of Election Night 2008.

 

In September 2007, Yang was the only television correspondent to accompany President Bush on his surprise visit to a U.S. airbase in Anbar Province in Iraq, west of Baghdad.

 

Yang joined NBC in January 2007 from ABC News, where he worked in Washington and Jerusalem. As ABC News’s Middle East correspondent, Yang covered many major events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the 2002 Israeli military operation in the West Bank and the final days of the standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Yang also spent extensive time in Iraq and was the first American broadcast reporter to interview captured al Qaeda fighters imprisoned along the Iran-Iraq border.

 

In 2000, he covered the presidential campaign of then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush during the Republican primaries. That fall, he covered then-Vice President Al Gore’s campaign through Election Day and the Florida recount.

 

In the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Yang reported from the Pentagon and was part of the ABC News team honored with both the Peabody Award and an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award. Yang was also part of the ABC News team honored with an DuPont-Columbia  Award for coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II.

 

Prior to joining ABC News, Yang was a reporter and editor at The Washington Post for nearly ten years. As a reporter, he covered Congress and the White House. As an editor, he directed coverage of economic policy in the paper’s business section and oversaw political features in The Post’s ‘Style’ section. Throughout his print career, he covered Congress and national politics. He had previously worked for The Boston Globe, Time magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

 

Yang was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, and graduated cum laude from Wesleyan University.