Fredricka Whitfield is an award-winning CNN anchor and is based in the network’s world headquarters in Atlanta. Whitfield anchors CNN Newsroom with Fredricka Whitfield, airing weekends on the network. Whitfield also anchors CNN Newsroom on CNN Max, airingWednesdays beginning at 8aET.
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Fredricka Whitfield is an award-winning CNN anchor and is based in the network’s world headquarters in Atlanta. Whitfield anchors CNN Newsroom with Fredricka Whitfield, airing weekends on the network.
Whitfield also anchors CNN Newsroom on CNN Max, airingWednesdays beginning at 8aET.
With an award-winning broadcast career that spans more than 30 years, Whitfield’s reporting ranges from covering stories from the Cuban-Haitian refugee crisis in the 90s, to the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential race and recount, the Kosovo War refugee crisis, the Afghanistan War and start of second Iraq War, the 2008 Inauguration of President Barack Obama, the Atlanta, Beijing and London Olympic Games, the 50th anniversary of Voting Rights Act in Selma Alabama, the Presidential primary races and National Conventions. Breaking news coverage includes domestic and international stories, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Whitfield is a great benefactor of early life exposure to global living and awareness. Born in Nairobi, Kenya thanks to her Olympic-medalist dad who became a career U.S. diplomat for more than 30 years, Whitfield lived, learned, and continues to appreciate the values of cultural diversity, awareness, compassion, and appreciation. She also lived in Somalia as a child and France as a college exchange student.
Prior to joining CNN in 2002, Whitfield was a correspondent for NBC News and served as an Atlanta-based correspondent for NBC Nightly News, The Today Show and Dateline NBC.
Before her time at NBC, Whitfield was a reporter and anchor at WPLG-TV in Miami, an evening anchor for News Channel 8 in Washington, D.C., and a general assignment reporter at KTVT-TV in Dallas as well as at WTNH in New Haven, Conn. She began her professional career as a reporter and morning anchor for WCIV in Charleston, S.C.
Whitfield has garnered multiple awards and honors for her broadcasting. In 2000 she earned an Emmy award nomination for long form storytelling, while other notable awards include the 2002 Howard University School of Communications Alumna of the year, 2004 Alfred I. DuPont Award winning team for CNN’s coverage of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, 2005 George Peabody award for the network’s live coverage of Hurricane Katrina and aftermath, 2005 Ebony award for Outstanding Women in Marketing and Communications, 2007 Emmy award for outstanding live coverage of a breaking news story long form, 2008 NAMD Communicator of the year, 2008 Howard University postgraduate achievement in the field of Journalism, and 2009 NYABJ long form feature. Whitfield was also a part of the network’s Peabody Award winning coverage of the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill and the 2011 Arab Spring. In 2017 Whitfield was nominated for a NAACP Image Award as Outstanding Host in a Talk or News/Information Series, in 2018 she was named one of Ebony’s Power 100, and in 2019 was named an 60th Anniversary Honorary Board Member of Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. In 2023, Whitfield was named the Women’s Media Center‘s Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award winner.
Whitfield earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Howard University.
