“Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts was strolling alongside the river in Tampa Saturday when she was stopped by a girl who had survived most cancers. The lady hugged Roberts and thanked her, explaining that she had been recognized with most cancers shortly after Roberts had determined to publicly doc her personal battle with the illness.
“If Robin can do it, I can do it,” the lady advised herself on the time. Now, she was coaching for a half-marathon.
“It’s moments like that that I understand, OK, as troublesome because it was, it was the correct determination,” Roberts advised reporters later that day at Poynter’s Bowtie Ball, the institute’s annual fundraising gala. She was there to obtain the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, which honors completed journalists who’ve considerably impacted the career. Previous recipients embrace Anderson Cooper, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Lesley Stahl.
All through Roberts’ four-decade profession, she has been her “genuine self,” Poynter president Neil Brown mentioned earlier than presenting Roberts with the medal in entrance of a crowd of greater than 500. That method has enriched her reporting and earned her audiences’ belief, he mentioned.
“If you wish to perceive the place real authenticity meets up with journalistic honesty … meet Robin Roberts,” Brown mentioned. “Robin’s skill to attach with each her topics and her viewers units her aside.”
Roberts is finest recognized for her work at ESPN and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which she has co-anchored since 2005. However earlier than that, she was a sports activities reporter at native tv stations within the South, making an attempt to realize the expertise she wanted to work at a spot like ESPN, the place she knew the “margin of error” she can be afforded as a girl can be lower than that of her male counterparts.
“That was a time, particularly, the place girls weren’t allowed entry to the locker room,” Roberts mentioned. “And I mentioned, ‘I don’t need equal entry to the locker room. I need equal entry to the athletes so I can do my job.’”
There have been moments when Roberts grew offended, however “grace and grit” acquired her by. Her father was a Tuskegee Airman who usually suggested, “Don’t give the enemy ammunition,” and she or he tried to undertake a mentality of optimism, not anger.
“I’d usually keep in mind the trailblazing members of my household and what they went by,” Roberts mentioned. “So if any individual was going to offer me a tough time as a result of I wished to be a sports activities journalist, deliver it on. That’s how I checked out it: ‘Convey it on.’”
Roberts has talked extensively about pleasure and optimism, evaluating it to a muscle that will get stronger with use. She mentioned she finds pleasure in “being of service and serving to others.” She additionally finds it in small moments like a sizzling espresso or seeing a beloved one.
“It’s these little moments. So don’t at all times search for the grandiose. Don’t at all times search for the massive,” Roberts suggested. “Simply have a look at all of the little, small issues, and that’s what I do, and it actually brings me pleasure.”
“Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts laughs in the course of the Poynter Institute’s Bowtie Ball in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 16, 2024. (Alex Smyntyna/Poynter)
On the morning after the election, Roberts shared a video message along with her greater than 980,000 Instagram followers, encouraging them to deal with one another with “respect and beauty.” She mentioned Saturday that it was necessary to her that she proceed her custom of posting each day “morning messages” all through the election interval because it was a technique she might persistently present up for audiences.
“It has been an especially difficult time for not solely journalists, however for the general public as properly — particularly the general public,” Roberts mentioned. “I can perceive why persons are skeptical. There’s a lot data, a lot misinformation that’s on the market that it’s numbing and exhausting.
“… How we transfer ahead — we’re going to be fact-based and fact-checked journalists.”
Roberts advised Poynter that she anticipates masking the second Donald Trump presidency will likely be completely different from the primary, partially as a result of journalists are actually conversant in him in a manner they weren’t throughout his first time period.
“However what is going to keep the identical is that, as we do with each president and each administration, we’ll maintain them accountable, no completely different than we did the primary time that he was there,” Roberts mentioned. “That’s not going to alter, and that by no means adjustments, regardless of who’s residing there on the White Home.”
How “Good Morning America” reaches audiences, nevertheless, is altering. Although the present has been the most-watched morning newscast for 13 years straight, Roberts acknowledged that individuals’s information habits are shifting.
“They nonetheless need the information, however they need it extra on their phrases, that means how they eat it, how they discover it’s completely different,” Roberts mentioned. “So at ABC, our TikTok is primary. We use social media. We use these platforms which are taking away from the linear viewers and embracing it. We’re not operating from it. We’re not afraid of it. We’re collaborative of it.”
The “ever-changing” nature of journalism is what continues to attract Roberts to the career in any case these years. The fundamentals of the job — storytelling, getting the info proper, proudly owning as much as errors — keep the identical, Roberts mentioned, however on daily basis is completely different.
“Journalism issues, and since it issues, I wish to be part of it. I wish to evolve with it. So on daily basis is a brand new day for me.”
