Monday, August 10, 2020

CNN newswoman Natasha Chen

Natasha Chen is a national correspondent for CNN and operates out of the cable news channel's Atlanta headquarters, concentrating on the Atlanta area and much of the rest of the American Southeast.


Her career began in Seattle as a general assignment reporter for KIRO-TV before she found that the road to fame led south. She worked as a reporter and a weekend anchor for KXXV-TV (on Channel 25, in case you didn't figure it out from the call letters) in Killeen, Texas, where she covered stories such as the mass shooting at Fort Hood. Later, at WREG-TV in Memphis, she reported stories on topics such as education and crime.


Today she spends extensive time covering the COVID-19 pandemic, which is more dangerous for her than for any reporter not of Asian origin.  While doing one COVID-19 report in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, someone yelled at her about CNN's coverage and then told her to "get out of my . . .  country" and that she was responsible for the COVID-19 virus.

Even if you subscribe to the idea that China is responsible for COVID-19, the Chinese government is the big culprit for trying to suppress news about it, not the Chinese people.  And Ms. Chen isn't even a Chinese national; she was born and raised in America, or maybe you didn't know that from the fact that her first name is Natasha.  (People in China don't give their daughters Western first names, and certainly not Russian first names like Natasha.) 

Anyway, you don't talk to an award-winning journalist like that.  The awards Ms. Chen received were the 2008 Simon T. Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism and 2015 Northwest Emmy Award for team coverage
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Fun fact: Ms. Chen graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University and got a master's degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Southern California.

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