About Miles @milesobrien
Miles O’Brien is veteran, independent journalist who focuses on science, technology and aerospace.
He is the science correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, a producer and director for the PBS science documentary series NOVA, and a correspondent for the PBS documentary series FRONTLINE and the National Science Foundation Science Nation series.
For nearly seventeen of his thirty-two years in the news business, he worked for CNN as the science, environment and aerospace space correspondent and the anchor of various programs, including American Morning.
While at CNN, he secured a deal with NASA to become the first journalist to fly on the space shuttle. The project ended with the loss of Columbia and her crew in 2003 – a story he told to the world in a critically acclaimed sixteen-hour marathon of live coverage.
Prior to joining CNN, he worked as a reporter at television stations in Boston, Tampa, Albany, NY and St. Joseph, MO. He began his television career as a desk assistant at WRC-TV in Washington, DC.
O’Brien is an accomplished aviator and aircraft owner who often pilots his airplane to assignments, and is frequently called upon to explain the world of aviation to a mass audience.
He has won numerous awards over the years, including a half-dozen Emmys, and a Peabody and DuPont for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
Born in Detroit and raised in Grosse Pointe Farms, MI, he is based in Washington, DC. He has a son at the US Naval Academy and a daughter at Davidson College in North Carolina. He was a history major at Georgetown University.
Miles’s Recent Stories
Science Jul 25
Life on Mars? Watery new discovery raises tantalizing possibilitiesScientists have finally found for the first time a large watery reservoir beneath the southern ice cap of Mars. Radar suggests it is more than 12 miles wide and similar in some ways to lakes found beneath the Greenland and…
Science Jul 11
NASA scientists track climate-changing methane leaks from the airScience correspondent Miles O’Brien joins us from the atmosphere above Southern California, where NASA engineers leverage state-of-the-art technology to measure methane. Released through oil and gas production, livestock emissions, and organic waste, methane is about 85 times more potent at…
Science May 16
Inside Facebook’s race to separate news from junkAt Facebook, there are two competing goals: keep the platform free and open to a broad spectrum of ideas and opinions, while reducing the spread of misinformation. The company says it's not in the business of making editorial judgments, so…
Science May 09
Why we love to like junk news that reaffirms our beliefsFacebook is exquisitely designed to feed our addiction to hyper-partisan content. In this world, fringe players who are apt to be more strident end up at the top of our news feeds, burying the middle ground. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien…
Science May 02
Junk News: Watch our seriesA deep-dive into the continuing problem of false or misleading news.
Science May 02
Online anger is gold to this junk-news pioneerMeet one of the Internet's most prolific distributors of hyper-partisan fare. From California, Cyrus Massoumi caters to both liberals and conservatives, serving up political grist through various Facebook pages. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien profiles a leading purveyor of junk news…
Science Apr 25
How Facebook’s news feed can be fooled into spreading misinformationFacebook’s news feed algorithm learns in great detail what we like, and then strives to give us more of the same -- and it's that technology that can be taken advantage of to spread junk news like a virus. Science…
Nation Apr 19
How Southwest pilot Tammie Jo Shults stayed calm in the cockpitTwenty minutes after takeoff, Southwest Flight 1380 had to make an emergency landing. One of the engines had exploded, sending metal fragments into cabin and shattering a window, killing passenger Jennifer Riordan. Pilot Tammie Jo Shults, a former navy pilot,…
Science Apr 11
How Facebook does businessFacebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg finished his visit to Capitol Hill with another long hearing Wednesday. After two days, do we have a better understanding of how the social media giant gathers data? Science correspondent Miles O'Brien joins Amna…
Science Mar 28
Global antibiotic overuse is like a ‘slow motion train wreck’Deadly antibiotic resistance is predicted to eclipse the number of people affected by cancer by 2050, and one of the biggest causes is overuse. A new study out Monday found the use of antibiotics worldwide has increased 65 percent in…
