Don Lemon
, CNN Newsroom Anchor
Don Lemon anchors CNN Newsroom during weekend prime-time and serves as a correspondent across CNN/U.S. programming. Based in the network’s New York bureau, Lemon joined CNN in September 2006.
A news veteran of Chicago, Lemon reported from Chicago in the days leading up to the 2008 presidential election, including an interview with then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel on the day he accepted the position of Chief of Staff for President-elect Barack Obama. He also interviewed Anne Cooper, the 106-year old voter President-elect Obama highlighted in his election night acceptance speech after he had seen Lemon’s interview with Cooper on CNN.
Lemon has reported and anchored on-the-scene for CNN from many breaking news stories, including the George Zimmerman trial (2013), the Boston marathon bombing (2013), the Philadelphia building collapse (2013), the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (2012), the Colorado Theater Shooting (2012), the death of Whitney Houston, the Inaugural of the 44th President in Washington, D.C., the death of Michael Jackson (2009), Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana (2008) and the Minneapolis bridge collapse (2007).
Lemon has also anchored the network's breaking news coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Arab Spring, the death of Osama Bin Laden and Joplin tornado. Lemon reported for CNN’s documentary Race and Rage: The Beating of Rodney King, which aired 20 years to the day of the beating. He is also known for holding politicians and public officials accountable in his "No Talking Points" segment.
Lemon joined CNN after serving as a co-anchor for the 5 p.m. newscast for NBC5 News in Chicago. He joined the station in August 2003 as an anchor and reporter after working in New York as a correspondent for NBC News, The Today Show and NBC Nightly News. In addition to his reporting in New York, Lemon worked as an anchor on Weekend Today and on MSNBC. While at NBC, Lemon covered the explosion of Space Shuttle Columbia, SARS in Canada and numerous other stories of national and global importance.
In addition to NBC5 and NBC News, Lemon has served as a weekend anchor and general assignment reporter for WCAU-TV, an NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, an anchor and investigative reporter for KTVI-TV in St. Louis and an anchor for WBRC-TV in Birmingham. He began his career at WNYW in New York City as a news assistant while still in college.
In 2009, Ebony named him as one of the Ebony Power 150: the most influential Blacks in America. He has won an Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the capture of the Washington, D.C. snipers. He won an Emmy for a special report on real estate in Chicagoland and various other awards for his reporting on the AIDS epidemic in Africa and Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, he won three more local Emmys for his reporting in Africa and a business feature about Craigslist, an online community.
Lemon serves as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College, teaching and participating in curriculum designed around new media. He earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Brooklyn College and also attended Louisiana State University.
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Two words for you: George Zimmerman. A lot of people have a lot of questions for him lately, including his estranged wife, that’s a whole other show though. However there is one question that I haven’t heard anybody say, and I think we should be asking him, and we should be asking ourselves. And I’ll tell you what that question is in just a moment. I’m going to speak directly to George Zimmerman, though, because I hope he hears this segment and if you know him, please send the clip to him. Email it to him.
George, since your acquittal just a few weeks ago you have been caught speeding twice, once in Texas where you got off with a warning, the other time in your home state of Florida, where you did finally get a ticket.
In the latest incident, with your soon to be ex-wife, and her father, it’s not clear yet whether you broke the law, but police did come, they did question you, and it’s being investigated as a possible domestic battery case because you allegedly hit her father and smashed your wife’s iPad because she was recording you with it. Police say they didn’t recover a gun at the scene, but the woman you were with said that you had one in your vehicle.
And then, George, you had the audacity to take a big, cheesy smiley picture while touring the gun factory where the type of gun you used to kill Trayvon Martin is made. You didn’t break the law with that one, but you certainly broke every rule relating to decency, and empathy, and couth.
George Zimmerman, haven’t you any shame? Have you no decency? No self-awareness.
Don’t you realize that while you escaped a life sentence the person you killed no longer has a life, and even though you were acquitted, like it or not, the reality is that there are many people around the world who are convinced that you got away with murder. And perhaps you should spare those people, especially Trayvon Martin’s grieving mother and father, the unwanted burden, of having to see or hear about you in the media, in some cases seemingly gloating for your good fortune and your freedom. Spare them. Spare us. Take the advice of a person who knows all too well about the media spotlight: Donald Trump, who said about you, it’s good for everybody if he disappears. This has been a really hard, traumatic verdict for the country. And then Trump went on to finish his statement by saying that you, George, should “disappear for his own sake, and for the country’s sake.”
Why don’t you take a cue from Donald Trump, from Casey Anthony even and disappear from the spotlight. OJ didn’t take that advice and you see where that got him. Everyone, including many who supported you, George, are now scratching their heads wondering why after a trial where you got off Scott free that you haven’t taken a seat, that you haven’t taken several seats. But what I really think is a better question for you, George, and for your supporters, the one that I want everyone listening today to ask themselves:
Why does a man who insisted that everyone follows the rules in law, especially Trayvon Martin, keep breaking the law himself?
