Steve Inskeep
Steve Inskeep is a host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.
Known for interviews with presidents and Congressional leaders, Inskeep has a passion for stories of the less famous: Pennsylvania truck drivers, Kentucky coal miners, U.S.-Mexico border detainees, Yemeni refugees, California firefighters, American soldiers.
Since joining Morning Edition in 2004, Inskeep has hosted the program from New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, Cairo, and Beijing; investigated Iraqi police in Baghdad; and received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for "The Price of African Oil," on conflict in Nigeria. He has taken listeners on a 2,428-mile journey along the U.S.-Mexico border, and 2,700 miles across North Africa. He is a repeat visitor to Iran and has covered wars in Syria and Yemen.
Inskeep says Morning Edition works to "slow down the news," making sense of fast-moving events. A prime example came during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when Inskeep and NPR's Michele Norris conducted "The York Project," groundbreaking conversations about race, which received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for excellence.
Inskeep was hired by NPR in 1996. His first full-time assignment was the 1996 presidential primary in New Hampshire. He went on to cover the Pentagon, the Senate, and the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he covered the war in Afghanistan, turmoil in Pakistan, and the war in Iraq. In 2003, he received a National Headliner Award for investigating a military raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. He has twice been part of NPR News teams awarded the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for coverage of Iraq.
On days of bad news, Inskeep is inspired by the Langston Hughes book, Laughing to Keep From Crying. Of hosting Morning Edition during the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, he told Nuvo magazine when "the whole world seemed to be falling apart, it was especially important for me ... to be amused, even if I had to be cynically amused, about the things that were going wrong. Laughter is a sign that you're not defeated."
Inskeep is the author of Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi, a 2011 book on one of the world's great megacities. He is also author of Jacksonland, a history of President Andrew Jackson's long-running conflict with John Ross, a Cherokee chief who resisted the removal of Indians from the eastern United States in the 1830s.
He has been a guest on numerous TV programs including ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, CNN's Inside Politics and the PBS Newshour. He has written for publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.
A native of Carmel, Indiana, Inskeep is a graduate of Morehead State University in Kentucky.
-
Messaging is important in public health. People who voted for Trump were especially hesitant about a "vaccine passport." But call it a "verification," and more people support it. -
Nurses are taking to social media, describing grim hospital scenes and imploring Americans to stay safe as hospitals reach capacity limits. "We're seeing the worst of the worst," says one nurse. -
But Dr. Francis Collins says it's unlikely a vaccine will be approved before late November. He also urges people to trust health experts like Anthony Fauci who "don't really have an ax to grind." -
Former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke told NPR's Steve Inskeep that "we're going to have to free ourselves from the dependence we have on fossil fuels and that means a greater investment in solar and wind." -
A new story in Buzzfeed News says President Trump directed his former lawyer to lie to Congress. Anthony Cormier, one of the Buzzfeed News reporters who broke the story, talks to Steve Inskeep.
-
Cecile Richards is walking a fine line: She paints the shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic as one of many attacks linked to "hateful rhetoric."She… -
The agency has repeatedly used deadly force along the U.S.-Mexico border while providing little or no information. Steve Inskeep describes four notable killings that have raised questions. -
Columbus, New Mexico, has a rich border history. Pancho Villa stormed across in 1916. Today, kids on the Mexico side take a bus — driven by the Columbus mayor — across the border to go to school. -
Juarez, Mexico — terrifyingly violent a few years ago — is quieter now. But life across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, is still difficult for many. -
Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep traveled the length of the U.S.-Mexico border to explore how the two countries are linked — and how they are separated.
