About William @WmBrangham
William Brangham is a correspondent and producer for PBS NewsHour in Washington, D.C. He joined the flagship PBS program in 2015, after spending two years with PBS NewsHour Weekend in New York City.
In his first three years, Brangham has done a range of award-winning reporting across the United States and internationally, covering everything from the severity of America’s opioid crisis, the integration of women into combat roles in the U.S. Marine Corps, to a profile of Ina Garten, the “Barefoot Contessa.”
Brangham’s reporting on the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 was among the work cited when the NewsHour won a George Foster Peabody Award that year. The next year, he reported a six-part series on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, which won a series of major awards including an Emmy and the National Academies of Sciences Communication Award. In 2018, Brangham worked on an investigative series about sexual assault and retaliation in the U.S. Forest Service. The day after that series aired, the head of the Forest Service suddenly stepped down.
When he is not out reporting in the field, Brangham is a regular interviewer on the NewsHour, and he has occasionally anchored the weekday and Weekend broadcasts.
During his career, Brangham has also worked on video projects for The New York Times, ABC News, National Geographic and Frontline. Prior to joining the NewsHour, he was a producer and correspondent for Need to Know on PBS, and before that, for Bill Moyers Journal. Brangham worked on several Moyers' documentary series in the 1990s, and was a producer on the critically acclaimed Now with Bill Moyers in the early 2000s.
In 2014, he was an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Brangham lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and three children.
William’s Recent Stories
Nation May 13
Here’s the latest on gas shortages in the US and the plans to prevent future hacksAlthough Colonial Pipeline has resumed operations after a cyberattack, things are yet to return to normal. William Brangham has a look at the new claims about the hack and the resulting gas crunch with Patrick De Haan, the head of…
World May 11
Is the Russian government involved in the Colonial Pipeline hack? One expert weighs inThe Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack showed the vulnerability of key parts of America's critical infrastructure, and how hostile actors can exploit those weaknesses. William Brangham and investigative reporter Michael Weiss look at what role — if any — the Russian…
Science May 10
FDA greenlights Pfizer vaccine for children ages 12 to 15New York became the latest state to require students at publicly funded colleges be vaccinated for the fall term — a move that comes as overall, new infections in the U.S. have fallen to their lowest since last September. Vaccine…
Nation May 10
What does the Colonial Pipeline hack tell us about the security of U.S. infrastructure?The federal government on Monday confirmed that a Russian criminal group is behind the hack of the Colonial Pipeline company. The pipeline — the largest of its kind in the U.S. — was shut down after a cyber extortion attempt.
World May 06
Waiving the vaccine patent may come down to giving pharmaceutical companies incentivesPresident Joe Biden has given the initial nod for the U.S. to waive patent rights on COVID vaccines to boost international production. But there are real questions over how effective these moves would be, what other countries feel about it,…
Arts May 06
The ‘ignored characters’ of the pandemic and why their premonitions were pushed asideA new book shows that there were a handful of researchers, scientists and public health officials who seemed to have an early, prescient understanding of how bad the pandemic would hit the U.S., and what we could do to avert…
World May 05
Waiving vaccine patent rights may be the ‘only way’ to end the pandemicPresident Biden announced that the U.S. will support waiving patent rights for the COVID vaccines — a major move that follows a call domestically, and internationally, for America to provide much quicker and greater assistance to the rest of the…
World May 03
India’s COVID-19 crisis is far from over, and vaccines alone won’t help. Here’s whyThe COVID-19 crisis in India shows little sign of slowing down. As death tolls and infections skyrocket, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership is under increasing political pressure and scrutiny. The country is short on vaccines, and other life-saving supplies like…
Nation Apr 30
How one Texas county is approaching the challenge of vaccinating the hesitantMore than 575,000 Americans lost their lives to COVID-19. Although more than half of all U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a vaccine, there are still challenges to getting people to take the shot, especially in Texas.
Nation Apr 29
The ‘predatory marketing’ behind menthol cigarettes and how a ban could save Black livesThe FDA announced Thursday it hopes to ban menthol in cigarettes and cigars, citing its particularly harmful impact on Black communities, to whom they were heavily marketed. William Brangham has more on the FDA's move and discusses it with Delmonte…