John Palmer

During his four decades in broadcast news, John Palmer has won numerous honors, including the Overseas Press Club Award and two Emmy Awards. He has covered breaking stories throughout the world. As White House correspondent for NBC News, he covered Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush. Palmer also served as news anchor for the Today show in New York for seven years, hosted the weekly Discovery Journal for the Discovery channel, and anchored World Monitor, the Christian Science Monitor’s national news broadcast. He retired from NBC News in February 2002 to pursue other broadcasting projects and speaking engagements.

Palmer began his broadcasting career in 1960 as a reporter and anchor at WSB-TV News in Atlanta, and he joined NBC News in Chicago in 1962. He has since been based in New York, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Paris, and Washington. Working in Beirut in the early 1970s, Palmer covered the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Arab oil embargo, the war in Cyprus, and the civil war in Angola. His coverage of the fighting in Lebanon won him the National Headliners Award. From 1976 to 1979 he was based in Paris with NBC News.

In 1980, broadcasting live from the White House, Palmer delivered the first news reports of the aborted rescue attempt of American hostages in Iran. For breaking that story and for his subsequent reporting, Palmer’s colleagues in the White House press corps honored him with the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for excellence in presidential news coverage. He was the first broadcast journalist to receive the coveted award.

In 1986 Palmer anchored the first hours of NBC’s coverage of the Challenger space shuttle tragedy, one of his many NBC News special reports. In 1988 he wrote and anchored the highly acclaimed one-hour NBC News documentary "The Pension Cookie Jar."

During the 1990 season Palmer anchored the nationally syndicated television program Instant Recall, interviewing notable figures on the worldwide stage. From 1992 to 1994 he was a television anchor and correspondent for the Monitor network; he rejoined NBC News in 1995.

A native of Kingsport, Tennessee, Palmer graduated from Northwestern University and earned a master’s degree from Columbia University. He has received several honorary doctorates. Palmer lives in Washington with his wife, Nancy, and their three daughters, Molly, Carter, and Hope.