Brian Rooney

— -- Brian Rooney joined ABC News in January 1988 and covers the Western United States as a correspondent based in Los Angeles. He reports for "World News with Diane Sawyer," "Good Morning America" and other ABC News broadcasts and platforms.

Rooney has covered everything from forest fires and earthquakes to politics and the art of making sculptures from rusted mufflers. In 1998, he climbed a 180-foot redwood tree to interview tree-sitter Julia "Butterfly" Hill.

Rooney reported on the Indian Ocean tsunami from Thailand and Indonesia and has spent time in Baghdad covering the Iraqi insurgency. In the fall of 2003, Rooney led ABC's coverage of the wildfires that swept through Southern California, and shared in the Edward R. Murrow Award for best news broadcast.

Rooney is a two-time winner of the Murrow Award and has been nominated for three national Emmy awards.

He has covered the Oklahoma City bombing; the 1994 rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico; the 1992 Los Angeles riots; and the 1991 Persian Gulf War, while based in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

From Beijing, Rooney contributed to the ABC News' coverage of the 1989 student uprising in Tiananmen Square. He was also one of the first ABC reporters to arrive in San Francisco after the October 1989 earthquake.

Rooney joined ABC News from WBBM-TV in Chicago, where he had been a general assignment reporter since 1985.

From 1981 to 1985, as general assignment reporter for WPRI-TV in Providence, Rhode Island, his reports led to the indictment of Providence Mayor Vincent Cianci. Rooney won a 1988 Emmy for coverage of the death of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. He won a 1984 Emmy in the Best News Special category for coverage of the America's Cup races in Providence, and an Associated Press Award for his coverage of Mayor Cianci.

Rooney spent six years as a print reporter for The Princeton Packet in New Jersey, and later The Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y. He began his broadcasting career in 1981 at WOKR-TV in Rochester.

Rooney graduated from Colgate University with a B.A. in English and received a Masters of Science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.