Don Gonyea
You're most likely to find NPR's Don Gonyea on the road, in some battleground state looking for voters to sit with him at the local lunch spot, the VFW or union hall, at a campaign rally, or at their kitchen tables to tell him what's on their minds. Through countless such conversations over the course of the year, he gets a ground-level view of American elections. Gonyea is NPR's National Political Correspondent, a position he has held since 2010. His reports can be heard on all NPR News programs and at NPR.org. To hear his sound-rich stories is akin to riding in the passenger seat of his rental car, traveling through Iowa or South Carolina or Michigan or wherever, right along with him.
Gonyea has been covering politics full-time for NPR since the 2000 presidential campaign. That's the year he chronicled a controversial election and the ensuing legal recount battle in Florida that awarded the White House to George W. Bush. Gonyea was named NPR White House Correspondent that year and subsequently covered the entirety of the Bush presidency, from 2001-2008. He was at the White House on the morning of Sept. 11, providing live reports following the evacuation of the building.
As White House correspondent, Gonyea covered the Bush administration's prosecution of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the 2004 campaign, he traveled with both Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry. He has served as co-anchor of NPR's election night coverage, and in 2008 Gonyea was the lead reporter covering Barack Obama's presidential campaign for NPR, from the Iowa caucuses to victory night in Chicago.
Gonyea has filed stories from around the globe, including Moscow, Beijing, London, Islamabad, Doha, Budapest, Seoul, San Salvador, and Hanoi. He attended President Bush's first-ever meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Slovenia in 2001, as well as subsequent — and at times testy — meetings between the two leaders in St. Petersburg, Shanghai, and Bratislava. He also covered Obama's first trip overseas as president. During the 2016 election, he traveled extensively with both GOP nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. His coverage of union members and white working class voters in the Midwest also gave early insight into how candidate Trump would tap into economic anxiety to win the presidency.
In 1986, Gonyea got his start at NPR reporting from Michigan on labor unions and the automobile industry. His first public radio job was at station WDET in Detroit. He has spent countless hours on picket lines and in union halls covering strikes at the major US auto companies, along with other labor disputes. Gonyea also reported on the development of alternative fuel and hybrid vehicles, Dr. Jack Kevorkian's assisted-suicide crusade, and the 1999 closing of Detroit's classic Tiger Stadium.
He serves as a fill-in host on NPR news magazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, and Weekend All Things Considered.
Over the years, Gonyea has contributed to PBS's NewsHour, the BBC, CBC, AP Radio, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He periodically teaches college journalism courses.
Gonyea has won numerous national and state awards for his reporting. He was part of the team that earned NPR a 2000 George Foster Peabody Award for the All Things Considered series "Lost & Found Sound."
A native of Monroe, Michigan, Gonyea is an honors graduate of Michigan State University.
-
President Bush has had a tough year. The war in Iraq dragged his public standing to its lowest ebb. His administration was criticized for its handling of Hurricane Katrina. But he did score one big success: the appointment of John Roberts as chief justice of the Supreme Court. -
President Bush says he approved domestic spying on people with suspected terrorist links without court warrants because it was "a necessary part of my job to protect" Americans from attack. At a press briefing, he said he would continue the program as long as the country faced terrorist threats.
-
President Bush says he repeatedly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on some U.S. citizens as an anti-terrorism measure. News of the spying helped block renewal of the USA Patriot Act.
-
The White House faces renewed criticism after The New York Times reports President Bush signed an order in 2002 that allowed domestic spying. The order authorized the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance on Americans in the United States without court order.
-
With public support for his handling of the Iraq war waning and Democrats on the attack, President Bush has been defending himself more aggressively. Monday, in a speech at an Air Force base in Alaska, the president said that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a threat that needed to be confronted.
-
Criminal charges against former White House aide I. Lewis Libby have focused new attention on the man he worked for. Vice President Dick Cheney's support for the Iraq war and his ideas about the treatment of detainees have drawn criticism.
-
President Bush is calling for $7.1 billion in emergency funding to protect against a flu pandemic. Speaking Tuesday at the National Institutes of Health, the president said he wants to have enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.
-
As a grand jury's term expires in the investigation of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald schedules a 2 p.m. news conference Friday. Speculation swirls regarding potential indictments.
-
A federal grand jury could return indictments against top White House officials as a result of an investigation into leaks that exposed the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. As speculation mounts, the role of Vice President Dick Cheney takes on new significance.
-
President Bush's top strategist, Karl Rove, spends four hours testifying in his fourth and final appearance before a grand jury investigating who exposed the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
