“Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts was walking along the river in Tampa Saturday when she was stopped by a woman who had survived cancer. The woman hugged Roberts and thanked her, explaining that she had been diagnosed with cancer shortly after Roberts had decided to publicly document her own battle with the disease.
“If Robin can do it, I can do it,” the woman told herself at the time. Now, she was training for a half-marathon.
“It’s moments like that that I realize, OK, as difficult as it was, it was the right decision,” Roberts told reporters later that day at Poynter’s Bowtie Ball, the institute’s annual fundraising gala. She was there to receive the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, which honors accomplished journalists who have significantly impacted the profession. Past recipients include Anderson Cooper, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Lesley Stahl.
Throughout Roberts’ four-decade career, she has been her “authentic self,” Poynter president Neil Brown said before presenting Roberts with the medal in front of a crowd of more than 500. That approach has enriched her reporting and earned her audiences’ trust, he said.
“If you want to understand where genuine authenticity meets up with journalistic honesty … meet Robin Roberts,” Brown said. “Robin’s ability to connect with both her subjects and her viewers sets her apart.”
Roberts is best known for her work at ESPN and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which she has co-anchored since 2005. But before that, she was a sports reporter at local television stations in the South, trying to gain the experience she needed to work at a place like ESPN, where she knew the “margin of error” she would be afforded as a woman would be less than that of her male counterparts.
“That was a time, especially, where women were not allowed access to the locker room,” Roberts said. “And I said, ‘I don’t want equal access to the locker room. I want equal access to the athletes so I can do my job.’”
There were moments when Roberts grew angry, but “grace and grit” got her through. Her father was a Tuskegee Airman who often advised, “Don’t give the enemy ammunition,” and she tried to adopt a mentality of optimism, not anger.
“I’d often remember the trailblazing members of my family and what they went through,” Roberts said. “So if somebody was going to give me a hard time because I wanted to be a sports journalist, bring it on. That’s how I looked at it: ‘Bring it on.’”
Roberts has talked extensively about joy and optimism, comparing it to a muscle that gets stronger with use. She said she finds joy in “being of service and helping others.” She also finds it in small moments like a hot coffee or seeing a loved one.
“It’s those little moments. So don’t always look for the grandiose. Don’t always look for the big,” Roberts advised. “Just look at all the little, small things, and that’s what I do, and it really brings me joy.”
“Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts laughs during 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 with her more than 980,000 Instagram followers, encouraging them to treat each other with “respect and grace.” She said Saturday that it was important to her that she continue her tradition of posting daily “morning messages” throughout the election period as it was one way she could consistently show up for audiences.
“It has been an extremely challenging time for not only journalists, but for the public as well — especially the public,” Roberts said. “I can understand why people are skeptical. There’s so much information, so much misinformation that is out there that it is numbing and exhausting.
“… How we move forward — we’re going to be fact-based and fact-checked journalists.”
Roberts told Poynter that she anticipates covering the second Donald Trump presidency will be different from the first, in part because journalists are now familiar with him in a way they weren’t during his first term.
“But what will stay the same is that, as we do with every president and every administration, we will hold them accountable, no different than we did the first time that he was there,” Roberts said. “That’s not going to change, and that never changes, no matter who is residing there at the White House.”
How “Good Morning America” reaches audiences, however, is changing. Though the show has been the most-watched morning newscast for 13 years straight, Roberts acknowledged that people’s news habits are shifting.
“They still want the news, but they want it more on their terms, meaning how they consume it, how they find it is different,” Roberts said. “So at ABC, our TikTok is number one. We use social media. We use these platforms that are taking away from the linear audience and embracing it. We’re not running from it. We’re not afraid of it. We’re collaborative of it.”
The “ever-changing” nature of journalism is what continues to draw Roberts to the profession after all these years. The basics of the job — storytelling, getting the facts right, owning up to mistakes — stay the same, Roberts said, but every day is different.
“Journalism matters, and because it matters, I want to be a part of it. I want to evolve with it. So every day is a new day for me.”
