Martha Raddatz

Martha Raddatz is about to receive the highest honor the National Press Club gives a journalist. She will accept its Fourth Estate Award at a gala in Washington, D.C. on November 12, 2026 — joining a winners’ list that includes Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour, Dean Baquet, Marty Baron, Wolf Blitzer, Lester Holt, Gwen Ifill, Andrea Mitchell, Clarissa Ward, Kristen Welker, and Susan Zirinsky. The Club calls it its most esteemed prize, and 119th president Mark Schoeff Jr. said her work “reflects the very best of our profession: rigorous reporting, clarity under pressure, and an unwavering commitment to informing the public on matters of global consequence.” (National Press Club; Editor & Publisher)

It is the kind of honor that closes a career — and Raddatz, ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent and co-anchor of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”, keeps collecting firsts instead. In September 2026, she sat across from the attorney general and refused to let him paraphrase his own words.

The Blanche interview

On September 27, 2026, Raddatz interviewed Attorney General Todd Blanche on “This Week” about President Trump’s September 18 decision to deactivate the White House press credentials of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO journalists ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Washington visit. The segment turned testy almost immediately. (USA Today Network via Reuters Connect; Daily Caller)

Raddatz asked whether Blanche was saying people would be screened before boarding a flight or entering the White House. “I did not say that! No, no, I did not say that! You don’t get to put words in my mouth!” he shot back. “I’m not defending myself! You said I said something that I didn’t say!” (USA Today Network via Reuters Connect)

Raddatz pressed him on what the First Amendment means to him and what he thinks the job of the press is. Blanche answered that what it means to him personally “is not the issue,” and that the free press can report whatever it wants — “but when it comes to the White House, it is the people’s house. It is a privilege and not a right.” He said Americans should expect coverage with “a whiff of impartiality” and “a whiff of accuracy,” and that ensuring accurate news reaches the American people is “absolutely the president’s duty.” When she countered with Trump’s own words about the outlets wanting to “diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration,” Blanche called the framing “extraordinarily disingenuous.” (Daily Caller)

Raddatz also cited the court record against him. Trump-appointed Judge Timothy Kelly had been skeptical of the Justice Department’s argument that the ban was grounded in national security, writing that nothing in the pre-lawsuit record suggested the hard-pass revocations were motivated by security concerns. A 2017 Trump appointee to the D.C. district court, Kelly had ordered a 14-day pause on the ban after the three outlets sued. (USA Today Network via Reuters Connect; Daily Caller)

From Boston to the Pentagon

Raddatz did not arrive at ABC as a star. Before 1993 she was the chief correspondent at the network’s Boston affiliate, WCVB-TV. From 1993 to 1998 she was the Pentagon correspondent for National Public Radio, learning the defense establishment from the building up. (National Press Club)

She began covering wars during the crisis in Bosnia in the late 1990s, but Iraq and Afghanistan are where she spent most of her time overseas — even during her stint as a White House correspondent in the George W. Bush administration, when she kept making regular trips to war-torn Iraq. (National Press Club)

Embedded, everywhere

The list of places Raddatz has filed from reads like a tour of two decades of American conflict. She was embedded with U.S. forces on dozens of missions, from Al Anbar province to the Hindu Kush. She is the only television reporter allowed to fly in an F-15 fighter jet on combat missions over Afghanistan, spending nearly 10 hours in the air across two separate missions. In 2011 she reported exclusive details on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and that same year she was one of the few reporters on the last major convoy out of Iraq. (National Press Club)

She got an exclusive interview on the USS Kearsarge, off the coast of Libya, with the Marines who helped rescue two American pilots who had gone down there. In 2012 she rode a U.S. destroyer through the Strait of Hormuz. She reported exclusively from the USS George H.W. Bush on the airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq in 2014, and again in March 2016 from the USS Truman. In 2015 she was granted exclusive access to the anti-ISIS command center at an undisclosed Middle East location, and she anchored “This Week” from an airbase conducting drone warfare. She covered both summits between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and was one of only a handful of journalists to report from North Korea in 2018. (National Press Club)

Her travels have also taken her to Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey, Libya, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and numerous countries across Africa and Asia. (National Press Club)

The debate moderator

In October 2012 Raddatz moderated the only vice presidential debate between Congressman Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden. Journalists covering the debate praised her pointed questions, her follow-ups, and her command of the room — several noted the contrast with Jim Lehrer’s timid performance in the first presidential debate. Both candidates told her afterward, “You were tough, but good job.” There was also partisan criticism: some conservatives said she cut Ryan off and let Biden interrupt. The Daily Caller had raised a pre-debate question about impartiality, noting Barack Obama had attended her 1991 wedding to law school classmate Julius Genachowski — a marriage that ended in divorce in 1997. Asked beforehand whether the Ryan campaign had any concerns about a conflict of interest, spokesman Michael Steel replied: “No concerns.” (Poynter)

For that debate she received the Walter Cronkite Award for excellence in political journalism with a special commendation for debate moderation. During the 2016 election she co-moderated the Democratic and Republican primary presidential debates on ABC and a general-election presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. (National Press Club)

Ukraine, Russia, and the 2025–26 interview run

Raddatz was present in Ukraine at the time of Russia’s invasion and continues to make repeated trips. She has interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv one-on-one three times — in July 2023, June 2025, and September 2025. She anchored “This Week” from Israel while reporting on the Israel-Hamas war, speaking with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Israeli Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, and she was in Israel in the days following the October 7 Hamas attack. In May 2025 she interviewed Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov about the state of peace talks with Ukraine. She also reported from the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021 attack. (National Press Club)

Books and awards

Raddatz is the author of “The Long Road Home—A Story of War and Family,” a book about a battle in Iraq that made both The New York Times and The Washington Post bestseller lists; in 2017 it was adapted into an eight-part scripted miniseries on the National Geographic Channel. Her second book, “The Hero Next Door – Stories of Patriotism and Purpose,” about American service members and their families, publishes in May 2026. (National Press Club)

The honors are extensive: seven Emmy Awards (including for teams covering Barack Obama’s inauguration and the killing of bin Laden), a Peabody Award for the team that covered the September 11 attacks, the 2012 First Amendment Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation and the Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, the 2007 International Urbino Press Award, the 2005 Daniel Pearl Award from the Chicago Journalists Association, a 1996 Overseas Press Club Award for live coverage of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the 2007 Merriman Smith Memorial Award from the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the 2018 George Catlett Marshall Medal for sustained commitment to the men and women of America’s armed forces. She is the mother of two children and sits on the board of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which supports wounded veterans and their families. (National Press Club)

What this profile does not claim

• An exact birth date. February 14, 1953 appears in Wikipedia and content-farm biographies, but no fully-read tier1 or tier2 source verified it. The profile makes no claim about her age or birth.
• University of Utah attendance. Wikipedia says she attended and dropped out to work at a local station; no independent source verified it in a full read, so it is not claimed.
• The details of her 2011 bin Laden raid reporting. The profile credits the exclusive reporting without restating its content, which the read sources did not reproduce.
• A verdict on the Blanche exchange. Outlets editorialized the interview as a clash or a “shut-down”; the profile reports only verified quotes and the verified court record, not a winner.
• Her first marriage timeline beyond the verified facts. The profile states only what Poynter verified: the 1991 wedding and the 1997 divorce.