Wright chronicled Barack Obama’s historic bid for the Democratic nomination, traveling with the campaign for the better part of a year. During the general election, he was assigned to cover Republican candidate Sen. John McCain.
Wright has been to Iraq more than a dozen times. He reported from Baghdad before the U.S. invasion and has since visited every major city in the country. His reports from Baghdad and Fallujah, part of ABC’s ongoing “Where Things Stand” project, shared a 2004 Emmy Award. His extensive reporting from Afghanistan was cited by the judges of the George Foster Peabody Awards as part of ABC’s overall coverage of Sept. 11 and its aftermath, while his coverage of the Darfur genocide in Sudan won a 2005 Emmy Award as well as an Overseas Press Club Award.
Keeping a close eye on the faltering efforts to foster peace in the Middle East, Wright has reported from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. During Israel’s 2006 war against Lebanon, he landed in Beirut just hours before the airport came under attack. He stayed for the duration of the conflict, and for most of that time was ABC’s only reporter in Lebanon.
Through his work at ABC News, Wright has had some remarkable life experiences -- hiking the Hindu Kush in the dead of winter, tracking polar bears on the shores of Hudson Bay and sitting face to face with mountain gorillas in Congo. His job has also, on occasion, given him a front row seat to history. He reported from Kabul the morning the Taliban fell, and from St. Paul the night Obama became the first black person to win his party’s nomination for president. The night Pope John Paul II died, Wright reported the news live from the Vatican. As white smoke proclaimed the election of Pope Benedict XVI, he was again live in St. Peter’s Square, as ABC’s papal coverage went on to win the 2006 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. Fortuitously, Wright also met his future bride on that assignment.
Wright joined the network in November 2000 as a correspondent for ABC News’ Los Angeles bureau. Before that, he was a political reporter and a substitute anchor for KRON, then the NBC affiliate in the Bay Area. He began his career in public radio as a reporter and anchor at WBUR-Boston and KQED-San Francisco, where he hosted the award-winning statewide broadcast “The California Report.” He was also a frequent contributor to NPR nationally.
David Wright on KCRW
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