Stephanie Becker, BA’82, is a field producer in CNN's Los Angeles bureau covering breaking news, investigative pieces, politics and features for broadcast and online.
Since graduating from IU with a degree in telecommunications, Becker has been a television journalist and writer. She worked at WPIX and WNYW — both in New York City — and “CBS Morning News” before beginning her 24-year career at NBC News. There, she covered the conflict in Somalia, several presidential campaigns, the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, three Olympics and the O.J. Simpson trials, producing more than 2,400 nationally broadcast segments for talent including Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel and Meredith Vieira.
She’s produced Red Carpet segments and interviews with celebrities, including Nancy Reagan and Celine Dion, and she’s produced feature pieces of little-known heroes in America for the award-winning "American Story" series. She’s followed stories as far as China, Australia, Greece, Somalia and the Philippines.
For three years, Becker worked for Al Jazeera America, where she produced half-hour shows about cutting-edge science at “TechKnow,” showing the intersection of science and humanity. Among her coverage was a program devoted to the dangers of vaping and another reporting the impact of climate change long before those issues made headlines. But for her, the most impactful story was about a face transplantation, which brought together the face transplant recipient and the daughter of the donor.
Now with CNN, Becker’s coverage focuses on voter suppression and COVID-19, among other beats.
She also worked on the team that exposed how dozens of deaths of horses at Santa Anita racetrack in California were connected to a particular trainer. Following that report, the trainer was banned from the track.
On top of her day job, she’s co-written the original “eBay for Dummies,” written opinion pieces for the LA Daily News and published a column on dating after divorce for women.com.
Becker was part of the NBC “Today Show” team that was awarded four Daytime Emmys. She's won two Edward R. Murrow Awards for feature pieces with Bob Dotson at NBC. She received two Headliner Awards for her work at the science show “TechKnow,” one for a program on earthquakes caused by fracking, and the other for a bittersweet show about how Lou Gehrig’s disease patients "banked" their voices. She was nominated for an Emmy for coverage of the Heaven’s Gate cult suicides and was part of the CNN team that was nominated for an Emmy for its coverage of the 2017 hurricane season.