Emmy Award-winning journalist Rita Cosby serves as a host and special correspondent for MSNBC. She currently anchors a daily live one-hour show, in addition to being the primary anchor of top-rated “MSNBC Investigates” and heading up the “Rita Cosby Specials Unit,” which secures the most sought-after interviews and exclusive reports that air on both MSNBC and NBC network news programs.
Most recently, Cosby hosted MSNBC’s “Rita Cosby: Live and Direct.” She traveled extensively for the show, covering breaking news and other major stories, originating live for several weeks from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region to report on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as from the war zone in Afghanistan and along the U.S.-Mexico border. She conducted the last broadcast interview with former Crips gang leader Stanley “Tookie” Williams, and was one of a few journalists selected to witness his execution at San Quentin Prison. Additionally, she conducted rare interviews with Erik Menendez and Dr. Jack Kevorkian, both also behind bars.
Prior to joining MSNBC, Cosby hosted Fox News Channel’s “The Big Story Weekend Edition with Rita Cosby” and “FOX News Live with Rita Cosby.” As a senior correspondent for the network, she secured some of the biggest interviews while covering U.S. and global breaking news, including an exclusive with former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic while he was imprisoned at The Hague. She secured historic back-to-back interviews with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and conducted an exclusive interview with Arafat when his compound was under siege in April 2002. Cosby was the first journalist to see the suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo and witness an actual interrogation. In addition, she was the first to interview former American POW Thomas Hamill, whose escape from his Iraqi captors made international headlines. Years earlier, while broadcasting live from Belgrade during the NATO bombing, she broke the news that three American POWs were going to be released.
Cosby also was granted a rare, private meeting with Pope John Paul II after receiving an exclusive letter from Timothy McVeigh explaining why he carried out the Oklahoma City bombing. She has interviewed four U.S. Presidents, President George H.W. Bush, President Bill Clinton, President Ronald Reagan and President Gerald Ford, as well as more than a dozen world leaders, including King Abdullah of Jordan, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and embattled Liberian President Charles Taylor, only days before he fled his country.
Cosby made national headlines for her interviews with boxer Mike Tyson, singer Michael Jackson, and convicted serial killer David Berkowitz, “The Son of Sam,” who wrote to her during the October 2002 D.C. sniper shootings. As that story unfolded, Cosby secured another major first, by reporting the names and license plate numbers of the sniper suspects. In 2001, Cosby’s interview with flight attendant Anne Marie Smith led to a U.S. Attorney’s Office investigation of Rep. Gary Condit for obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
Cosby served as a lead reporter during the 1996 and 2000 Presidential campaigns. During the Monica Lewinsky investigation, she broke the news that President Clinton was going to be subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. It was Cosby again who surprised the President as well as fellow reporters when, during a live White House press conference, she informed him that he would be subpoenaed to testify in the Whitewater trial.
She also scored the only interview with the Montana Freeman during their 1996 standoff with the FBI, covered the LA riots, visited the Aryan Nations compound, and interviewed leaders of the KKK. Her investigative report inside a Tijuana, Mexico prison exposed government corruption and allowed an American, who was held unlawfully, to be freed.
Cosby joined Fox News Channel at its inception from WBTV, the CBS affiliate in Charlotte, North Carolina. During her tenure there, she broke numerous stories, reporting that Susan Smith drowned her two young sons and that the father of NBA superstar Michael Jordan was murdered.
Cosby has received numerous awards and honors for her reporting, including three Emmy Awards, the National Foundation for Women Legislators’ 2003 Media Award for Excellence, the 2002 Association of Women in Communications Headliner Award, and also the Matrix Award and Jack Anderson Award, both for journalism distinction. A first-generation American and daughter of a Polish POW, in 2006 she was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
Cosby earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina, graduating with honors. In 1998, Cosby was presented with the USC Distinguished Alumni Award. She speaks several languages and is fluent in Spanish, having lived in Seville, Spain. She grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and currently resides in the New York area.