Melissa Block
As special correspondent and guest host of NPR's news programs, Melissa Block brings her signature combination of warmth and incisive reporting. Her work over the decades has earned her journalism's highest honors, and has made her one of NPR's most familiar and beloved voices.
As co-host of All Things Considered from 2003 to 2015, Block's reporting took her everywhere from the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the heart of Rio de Janeiro; from rural Mozambique to the farthest reaches of Alaska.
Her riveting reporting from Sichuan, China, during and after the massive earthquake in 2008 brought the tragedy home to millions of listeners around the world. At the moment the earthquake hit, Block had the presence of mind to record a gripping, real-time narration of the seismic upheaval she was witnessing. Her long-form story about a desperate couple searching in the rubble for their toddler son was singled out by judges who awarded NPR's earthquake coverage the top honors in broadcast journalism: the George Foster Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, National Headliner Award, and the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award.
Now, as special correspondent, Block continues to engage both the heart and the mind with her reporting on issues from gun violence to adult illiteracy to opioid addiction.
In 2017, she traveled the country for the series "Our Land," visiting a wide range of communities to explore how our identity is shaped by where we live. For that series, she paddled along the Mississippi River, went in search of salmon off the Alaska coast, and accompanied an immigrant family as they became U.S. citizens. Her story about the legacy of the Chinese community in the Mississippi Delta earned her a James Beard Award in 2018.
Block is the recipient of the 2019 Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, awarded by the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, as well as the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fulbright Association.
Block began her career at NPR in 1985 as an editorial assistant for All Things Considered, and rose through the ranks to become the program's senior producer.
She was a reporter and correspondent in New York from 1994 to 2002, a period punctuated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Her reporting after those attacks helped earn NPR a George Foster Peabody Award. Block's reporting on rape as a weapon of war in Kosovo was cited by the Overseas Press Club of America in awarding NPR the Lowell Thomas Award in 1999.
Block is a 1983 graduate of Harvard University and spent the following year on a Fulbright fellowship in Geneva, Switzerland. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband — writer Stefan Fatsis — and their daughter.
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A group of women in New Hampshire who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary talk about what motivated their choice to back the only female candidate running for president. Also, Marianne Pernold Young talks about the question she posed to Clinton on Monday that made the senator teary.
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Former Sen. George Mitchell's report on the use of performance-enhancing substances in Major League Baseball is out. Mitchell presented his findings Thursday — including the names of dozens of current and former players. What does it mean for baseball?
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A new U.S. intelligence report on Iran says Tehran may be able to develop a nuclear weapon between 2010 and 2015. But the National Intelligence Estimate finds that Iran halted its development program in the fall of 2003 — contradicting claims by the Bush administration.
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Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto plans to begin a procession across the country Tuesday to rally support against the emergency rule imposed by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. But authorities say they will block the march.
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Unless Hollywood writers and studios reach a deal over the weekend, the Writers Guild of America will strike just after midnight next Monday. That could mean many TV shows will have to revert to re-runs. The writers and studios are at odds over how much writers should make in royalties when shows are resold on DVD or the Internet.
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Paul Tibbets, who piloted the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, has died at age 92. On Aug. 6, 1945, Tibbets' B-29 dropped the nearly five-ton bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Tibbets always insisted that he did not have regrets.
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Iraqi leaders are vowing to crack down on the Kurdish separatist group known as the PKK as Turkish troops gather at Iraq's mountainous northern border. Diplomatic talks between Turkey and Iraq on Tuesday brought promises, but it's unclear what Baghdad can do to rein in the Kurdish rebels.
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The White House made sure Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey would fly with potential opponents: conservative Republicans as well as various Democrats. President Bush stayed away from more volatile choices.
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A new Osama bin Laden videotape surfaced Friday, and Michael Hayden gave a rare speech in New York, saying al-Qaida leaders continue to plot a "high-impact" attack on the United States. The CIA director also defended the government's program of detaining and interrogating prisoners.
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During an unannounced visit to Iraq on Monday, President Bush said that he'll make his decision on United States combat force levels in the country based on his commanders' assessments, not on pressure from, in his words, "Washington politicians."