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.
@DonLemonCNN
I want to follow up on a subject I talked about last time.
Eric Garner, the man who died after an apparent chokehold by New York City Police, did not die in vain.
Here’s why.
All those videos that are rarely shown on the news, but are shared all over social media, of police officers all over the country pummeling suspects, are now being played everywhere from local public access channels to the network news.
Those videos are being highlighted, slow-mo’d and rewound with every second examined.
That was the man’s wife looking on.
He did die and the officers are all back on duty after Moore, Oklahoma prosecutors found the use of force justified.
In Atlantic City there’s a video of a 20-year old man who needed 200 stitches after being pummeled by police with batons for being underage in a casino.
In Albuquerque, there’s police video of an unarmed homeless man being shot in the back and killed by police.
Because there have been 26 officer involved shootings there since 2010 and not one single prosecution, the justice department is seeking federal supervision of the entire police department.
The grandmother seen on video being viciously beaten by a California Highway Patrol officer on an LA freeway on July 1st is still in the hospital with head injuries and has now filed a civil rights lawsuit.
Back in New York another video is going viral of another officer appearing to apply a chokehold and repeatedly punching the man in the head for sneaking into the subway.
Internal affairs is investigating.
There are too many to count and even fit into this commentary.
But I made a point yesterday and the day before to watch as many newscasts as I could.
The same story with the same title, “How Much Force Is Too Much force for Police?” was on every single one of those broadcasts both locally and nationally.
Just two days ago I ended my commentary right here on the TJMS by saying, “It’s time for New York’s mayor to have a come to Jesus with the NYPD and its commissioner.”
Low and behold, that same afternoon, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton announced sweeping changes and training in police tactics.
Bratton says they would be traveling to other cities throughout the country to learn how the NYPD can improve and what they can teach other departments.
43-year old Eric Garner was laid to rest in Brooklyn last night.
Wouldn’t’ it be something if someday he’s remembered for how he saved lives instead of how his life ended?
