As we try to survive 2020, we are tempted to think this is the worst it can be. Journalist Ann Curry has seen much worse during her assignments covering active war zones and natural disasters. While she pursues her career, she has been breaking barriers and helping to open our eyes to the rest of the world.
Curry was born on November 19, 1956, in Agaña, Guam, a United States territory whose citizens are United States citizens. Her parents are Hiroe Nagase and Robert Curry, giving Curry ancestry from Japan, Ireland, and Germany. Because of her father’s naval career, the family of seven lived in Guam, Japan, and then the United States. In 2018, Curry talked about how her parents’ meeting and getting married inspired her to become a journalist and to look for the human aspect of news.
Curry earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism at the University of Oregon in 1978 and then began her life’s work as a journalist. First, she so impressed the bosses at her internship at KTVL in Medford, Oregon that she became their first woman news reporter. She continued at KTVL from 1978 to 1981 before moving to Portland to work at KGW until 1984. Switching networks for a short time, Curry moved to Los Angeles to work for KCBS from 1984 to 1990.
By 1990, she was the Chicago correspondent for NBC News, which signaled her move into the big leagues of television news. Curry became a reporter for one of NBC’s morning shows, NBC News at Sunrise, in1991, then was promoted to anchor in 1992, staying until 1996. Curry next took another anchor position at the long running The Today Show from 1997 to 2012. She also became a contributing reporter for Dateline in 1997. While at NBC she traveled around the world looking at natural and human-made crises. While continuing to do all of that international reporting, Curry also became co-anchor at Dateline NBC in 2005.
Curry went on to be best known for her stories about human perseverance in war-torn and disaster-stricken areas around the world. Ann Curry has been recognized several times for her work covering the human side of the news, often being the first Western reporter to venture into areas of war-torn Europe, Africa, and Asia. While at KCBS in Los Angeles, Curry won her first award for reporting on the 1987 October earthquake as well as her second award for her work covering the 1987 gas pipeline explosion in San Bernardino. In 2003 she earned the UO Pioneer Award from the University of Oregon as well as the National Journalism Award from the Asian American Journalist Association. In 2009, she won the International Matrix Award for her international reporting.
For her work, Curry was nominated multiple times for the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, first established in 1980. She has won that award several times from 2007 to 2014, both as part of a team with The Today Show as well as for her individual stories on NBC Nightly News and for Dateline NBC. Her coverage of the “Crisis in Darfur,” her work on the breaking story “Miracle on the Hudson,” and her “America Now: Friends and Neighbors” series are among her work that has been honored.
Curry’s work on Dateline and Today was groundbreaking, but the difficulties were not just out in the field. By 2012 she was out, while sexual harasser Matt Lauer signed his best contract yet. Before #metoo came to the attention of the mainstream media, it was easier to get rid of women who knew what was happening than to address the sexism inside the media industry. Many people believe that is what happened to Curry. She has spoken out about the sexual harassment common at NBC.
In 2015, Curry began her own media company and continued to do reporting for various networks. In 2018-2019, PBS aired her series We’ll Meet Again, looking at people torn apart and reunited, much as her parents were. Currently, she is working on both TNT’s Chasing the Cure and a mini-series titled United Nations World Food Program: Solving Hunger at Scale while also doing guest appearances on various news and television shows to talk about her reporting and human rights work. The Centre for Responsible Leadership recognized Curry in 2019 with their Truth in Media Award for her continued coverage of crises around the world and her focus on human rights issues in areas of war and devastation.
Photo Credit: Ann Curry at 2012 Time 100 Gala, By David Shankbone - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19229043.