Bob Brown
— -- Bob Brown joined ABCNEWS' 20/20 in August 1980 and has since reported on a wide range of subjects for the broadcast.
Brown investigated the inadequate record-keeping that led to the government denial of benefits earned by many U.S. combat veterans. He traveled to a village on the plains of northern India to visit a girls’ school that was funded with tips collected by a New York City taxi driver in memory of his mother. Brown went to Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta of Vietnam to report on an outcast, the daughter of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese mother, who rose to become one of Vietnam’s most popular entertainers and discovered her father in the process.
He reported the story of the Irish tenor, Dr. Ronan Tynan, who gained international fame as a singer only after a lifetime of other accomplishments, including winning gold medals in world Special Olympics competitions and earning a medical degree from Dublin’s Trinity University. He was also part of the acclaimed, 24-hour ABCNEWS Millennium broadcast.
In the prior season, he told how a medical mission to the Dominican Republic changed the lives of two unlikely missionaries and a charismatic young boy in need of their help. And he reported the remarkable story of a Portland door-to-door salesman who has successfully walked his route for 35 years, despite being afflicted with cerebral palsy. A report on lightning examined this mysterious and potentially deadly element and focused on the experiences of individuals who survived a close encounter with this powerful force of nature. Brown also reported on a 35-year-old mother, dying of cancer, who placed a lifetime of comfort, advice and opinions for her young daughter on videotape.
In addition, he is heard often as a narrator on the A&E series, Biography, and on Discovery Channel documentaries.
Brown has won numerous awards for his 20/20 reports. During the 1992-93 season, he was honored with the Investigative Reporters Award and an American Bar Association Gavel Award for a 20/20 segment, “To Prove Them Innocent,” a report that prompted the release of three men imprisoned for rape in Pennsylvania. A story called “The Gift of Life,” about a desperately wounded Vietnam soldier and the Army surgeon who had saved his life more than 25 years before, won an Alfred I. duPont Award Silver Baton, an Ohio State Award and a Gabriel Award, among others.
He also received a 1991 honor from the American Women in Radio and Television for his profile of a powerful, ambitious, 96-year-old woman who runs a furniture empire in Nebraska; and a 1990 National Headliner Award for an Outstanding Feature by a Television Network for “Children of Yesterday,” about a West German town tracing Holocaust survivors who, as children, had been driven from the town.
He is the recipient of six Emmy awards, his most recent for “Stephani’s Triumph,” a profile of a young film student who documented her recovery from a devastating accident. He received a Media Award from the President’s Committee on Employment of People With Disabilities for his profile of Christopher Nolan. He received the Media Access Award from the California Governor’s Committee for Employment for the Handicapped for his story, “A Very Special Vision,” about a blind high school wrestler. Mr. Brown also received the Bronze Wrangler Award for Best Television Documentary Writing from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for his report, “On the Range.” He was honored with the 1994 CINE Golden Eagle Award for the segment, “A Dream Come True,” a story of a woman who believes she was reincarnated.
Prior to joining 20/20 full time, Brown contributed “Special Assignment” reports on ABCNEWS’s World News Tonight, focusing on the 10th anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival, and the Irish Republican Army, in 1979-80. He also covered the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York, for ABCNEWS.
Brown joined ABCNEWS in August 1977 as a New York-based correspondent, after serving as an anchorman and reporter at WFAA-TV, the network’s Dallas affiliate, since February, 1975.
Brown was an anchor at KHOU-TV in Houston for two years prior to working in Dallas. He served twice at KOTV in Tulsa, interrupted by a two-year army obligation. Mr. Brown was graduated from the University of Tulsa and later taught newswriting at that school. He has lectured as part of the Park Distinguished Visitor Series at Ithaca College, and as a guest at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
He is the author of two high school textbooks, China and the World and United States History, Volume Five.