CBS News President Susan Zirinsky to receive 2020 Fourth Estate Award Nov. 18
Susan Zirinsky, president and senior executive producer of CBS News, will receive the National Press Club's highest honor, the Fourth Estate Award, on Nov.18.
Zirinsky is the 48th recipient of the award, which recognizes journalists who have made significant contributions to the field.
“Susan Zirinsky is the personification of journalistic perseverance, tenacity, and integrity,” Club President Michael Freedman said. “Like the best of those before her at the network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, Susan leads by example, displaying the courage of her convictions and making a positive difference – at CBS News and throughout the profession. She is a role model not only for women but for everyone who is dedicated to journalistic ethics and excellence. We are proud to honor her achievements - and that's the way it is."
The Fourth Estate Award is awarded by the Club's Board of Governors. The first recipient was Walter Cronkite, also of CBS News, in 1973. Other winners include Amanda Bennett, Marty Baron, Dean Baquet, Wolf Blitzer, Gwen Ifill, Marvin Kalb, Andrea Mitchell, Bob Woodward, Jim Lehrer, Christiane Amanpour and David Broder.
The awards dinner is a fundraiser for the Club's nonprofit affiliate, the National Press Club Journalism Institute, which promotes an engaged global citizenry through an independent and free press, and equips journalists with skills and standards to inform the public in ways that inspire civic engagement.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Fourth Estate Award gala will take place online, with a virtual program celebrating this year’s honoree beginning at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $25 each for Club members and one guest. Tickets are $50 each for the general public. Table seating requests can be made after tickets are purchased. Please click here to purchase tickets.
Zirinsky began her career in 1972 as a part-time desk assistant in the CBS News Washington bureau two weeks after the Watergate break-in. Still completing her undergraduate degree at American University at the time, she was surrounded by the legendary CBS News reporting team led by Cronkite that dominated Watergate coverage on television.
Quickly rising through the ranks, Zirinsky became an associate producer for “CBS Morning News” and then a producer on “CBS Evening News" with Cronkite. In that role, she became a White House producer and spent a decade covering the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan presidencies. She traveled with them throughout the world where she produced reports with Lesley Stahl, Ed Bradley, Bob Schieffer and Bill Plante for various broadcasts. She was promoted in 1987 to senior producer for the "CBS Evening News" when Dan Rather was the anchor.
In a career spanning four decades, Zirinsky has produced a wide variety of award-winning documentaries and programs, and she covered a range of historic stories, from the Gulf War to the student uprising in Tiananmen Square, from the White House for 10 years to the 9/11 attacks, and from the Paris terrorist attacks to the mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school. Her work has garnered many of journalism’s top honors, including multiple Emmys, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and the George Foster Peabody Award.
Zirinsky took the helm of CBS News as president and senior executive producer on March 1, 2019. In her first nine months on the job, Zirinsky oversaw an overhaul of the news division, including the launch of the “CBS Evening News" with Norah O’Donnell as anchor, and the move of the broadcast to Washington, where it is the only commercial broadcast network nightly newscast based in the nation’s capital.
For more information on sponsorship opportunities or to purchase tickets to the dinner, please click here or call Julie Moos, executive director of the National Press Club Journalism Institute at (202) 662-7507.