[intro music] - [Nido] Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side By Side.

My guest today struggled as a child with illiteracy and a stutter.

Through his strong sense of faith and hard work, he overcame those challenges to become a multiple Emmy award winning journalist covering events that include 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing to name just a few.

We've watched him on 60 minutes and today he is the co-anchor of ABC news Nightline.

We're talking with Byron Pitts.

- [Announcer] Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - [Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things, you make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Presenter] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

- [Narrator] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[intro music] - [Nido] Byron, welcome to Side By Side.

I have been watching you on television for many years.

You are a master of your trade.

You have multiple Emmys.

You are the co-anchor of ABC News Nightline.

You have done many specials.

You are the senior national correspondent, but you started your television career in The Tar Heel State.

- [Byron] I did.

I did in Greenville, North Carolina, which means a number of things.

One, I know my way around a barbecue sandwich being in Eastern North Carolina.

And it was a wonderful experience.

Greenville, as you know, is a wonderful community.

My family's from North Carolina actually.

My mother was born, raised, and she's buried in a family plot in Apex, North Carolina.

So this, this place, this state has always been a great deal to me and to my family.

- [Nido] So you began doing what, what station was it and what did you do?

- [Byron] Sure, I worked at WNCT TV in Greenville, North Carolina I was a general assignment reporter.

That means every car accident, rainstorm I covered.

The big story was the annual Flue-cured Tobacco Festival.

Covered that with great pride.

And I was also, I was very briefly and I mean, briefly, I had a cup of coffee as the weekend sports anchor.

I thought, cause I played collegiate football, I thought I could be a sports anchor.

We all quickly discovered that that wasn't my gifting.

I remember one of the first nights on the air, weekend sports.

I was in high school scores, high school football, which is big across the country, particularly big here in North Carolina.

And so I left my script back on my desk.

So go to the anchor set without a script, no teleprompter.

And I thought I can just fake, I know enough about high school football.

And so I say, I, there was a high school, had like Gardner-Webb.

It was a high school with a hyphenated name.

And, and, and I, in my nervousness, I said, Gardner beat Webb.

And the photographer like shook his head, oh, I'm sorry, breaking news, Webb beat Gardner.

He throw up his hands.

I didn't last very long.

- [Nido] You messed up pretty bad.

- [Byron] I did.

I did.

I was awful.

- [Nido] You went to Ohio Wesleyan University for college, a very fine institution.

Did you play football there?

- [Byron] I did.

I did.

I did.

I played football.

I wrestled, but I played football there all four years.

It was a great school.

One of the reasons why I went there, my mother Clarice Pitts is her name, God called her home about 10 years ago.

Woman of deep faith.

Next to the Bible, her favorite book was The Power of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.

And once mama found out that Dr. Peale had gone to Ohio Wesleyan, she was done, which meant I was done.

- [Nido] Yes.

Bryon, and you probably don't know this, but I wrote my first book in 1983 and Norman Vincent Peale was at the zenith of his career.

And I asked him to write the foreword to my book.

I was a kid.

- [Byron] Yeah.

- [Nido] And he wrote me back and he said, that's orders from headquarters.

Of course, I will.

And wrote the most beautiful forward.

It impacted me measurably that a man of that stature would get out of his comfort zone to do something for a kid in his first book.

Then we became very good friends there after.

He lived to be a hundred, as you know, and passed away on Christmas Eve.

- [Byron] Wow.

- [Nido] Amazing story.

- [Byron] Which speaks to I think certainly his character, but, but as you know, part of being dynamic, part of being a leader is being a servant, being, being gracious, being a giver, as opposed to taker.

- [Nido] Yes.

- [Byron] That's awesome.

- [Nido] Yeah, and that's, you speak of your mom a lot.

You speak of your mom's impact in your life.

- [Byron] Yes.

- [Nido] She lived in North Carolina, she was buried in North Carolina.

What exactly did your mom do that impacted your life in such a measurable way?

- [Byron] In a word, everything.

This is the woman who gave me life.

This is the woman who directed my life.

My mother was my biggest fan and my biggest critic.

What I loved about her is that she could be, my mother was old school.

There all, there were two rules in her house.

Rule number one, she makes them.

Rule number two, you follow them.

There was no, there was no three, four.

- [Nido] This is it.

- [Byron] Yeah, that's it.

And so she was incredibly demanding, but she was also equally loving and supportive.

As I said, I played football and my mother went to every football game I ever played in.

Even when I went to college, she would save up money to come to at least two games of mine a year.

I remember my mother had major surgery when I was in high school and she scheduled the surgery as early in the week as possible in hopes that she could make it to my game.

Well, by that Friday night, she still wasn't able to make the game.

So she told my brother, my older brother, Matt, she has a man come to the hospital and my brother snuck her out of the hospital, in the rain, in a big trench coat and brought her to my game.

And so there's a spot she would always stand.

I would look there and there she was.

- [Nido] Wow.

- [Byron] Now mind you, I was a freshman.

I wasn't gonna play.

She knew, I knew, And she knew I wasn't gonna play, but it was important for her to be present.

So she was always present in my life.

She, a woman of deep faith.

I remember, you know, one of my professional goals early on was to work for 60 minutes, for CBS.

And I remember on my 18th birthday, my mother and I prayed for that.

Cause in my faith tradition say it, claim it.

And so my mother believed that if we, if we say it out loud, if we ask our Lord and Savior this and, and, and you do your work, right?

The, the, as you know, the, the African proverb, when you pray, move your feet, that son, if you do your part, our God will do his part.

And so it was that optimistic spirit that she gave me.

I wear her cross, now, that I took off, off of her neck before she took her last breath.

And yeah, she, she guided me all of my life when she was alive.

And, and, and she remains my North Star in many ways.

- [Nido] What a legacy.

- [Byron] Yeah.

- [Nido] What impact.

Tremendous.

- [Byron] Greatly.

- [Nido] Tell us about the one time that you, you're on an assignment and you botched it up.

You've talked about this sports thing, but in terms of the news.

- [Byron] Oh, sure.

Well, how much time do you have.

- [Nido] Bust it up and your boss called you in and.

- [Byron] Oh, sure.

- [Nido] Read you the book and you were scared to death.

- [Byron] Oh, sure.

Well, that, that happened a couple of times.

I'll give you two quick examples if I may.

One was, I was covering the Florida recount when I was at CBS News between Vice President - [Nido] George Bush - [Byron] Yes, and Al Gore, and it was going back and forth.

And so, as it turns out, cause I was assigned to cover what we thought would be a brief story, ended up being a huge story for a number of days, I was a lead story in this very historic event.

- [Nido] And you were covering that for - - [Byron] CBS news - [Nido] CBS news - [Byron] CBS news with Dan Rather.

And as you know, along with a stutter, I didn't learn to read until I was almost 13 years old.

So I don't, so I'm a slow reader still.

Like I have to start early, stay late.

And so anyway, and so I would rather be in the midst of gunfire, then to have to be giving some information to read, live on the air.

It causes me some anxiety.

Anyway, so, so the, the ruling comes in as we're on the air, and I have to pivot to what I was going to say to what was actually happening.

And I stumbled.

As a stutterer, I only stutter if I'm tired, nervous, or angry.

- [Nido] Still?

- [Byron] Still.

- [Nido] Still.

- [Byron] And I work really hard to avoid, to not be in that space.

Therefore I get my rest, I try to eat healthy, I exercise.

And so anyway, and so I, I got nervous and I started stuttering and it got so bad, Doc.

- [Nido] And you were live.

- [Byron] Live on the air.

And this is, you know, one of the biggest stories of the year of historic significance.

And I flub it.

I'm so bad that the photographer is a friend of mine.

He, he leans around his camera, like, You okay?

You having a heart attack?

What's going on?

It was so bad.

And this is going downhill.

I stopped speaking.

And so Dan said, asked me a question.

I didn't say anything.

- [Nido] Wow.

- [Byron] He says, well, we're obviously having technical problems.

And he went back on the air and I knew in that moment, my career was over.

Everything I'd worked, for my mom had prayed for, I just ruined it on this big story.

So I go and I immediately thanked the crew, took my mic off, got my rental car, and drove to the, drove to the, my hotel.

- [Nido] Did you cry?

- [Byron] I did, because I knew I was, not only was I, had I known, ruined my dreams.

I had ruined the dreams that people had from my mother, the elders in my church, my brother and sister, my aunts and uncles.

And so, and I remember I, by the time I got back to the hotel, my mama called because she knew where I was staying.

And she said, "Son, you okay?"

I said, yes ma'am.

And she said, "What the hell happened?"

Because she, my mother always, she never sugarcoated things like, like you deal with the truth.

So she had a very harsh conversation about my performance and how it didn't measure up.

And so, yeah, we went through that and I explained to her why she was, you know, we don't make excuses, like, okay, you didn't do your job well.

It's okay.

We prayed about it.

And she said, "Okay, what are you gonna do now?"

I said, "I think I'm gonna go to bed."

It's like eight o'clock at night.

I went to bed, woke up the next day.

And the next day I realized that the same God who had protected me, who had lifted me my entire life.

I don't know where he was those two minutes I was on television, but he was still in my life.

That'd be okay.

So my boss called me up, like.

"What the..?

"I've been trying to reach you since last night.

What the hell?"

- [Nido] Yeah.

- [Byron] And, and laid to me pretty hard.

He says, "What the hell happened?"

I said, "What do you mean?"

"Last night?"

"What are you talking about?"

[indistinct grumbling noise] I said, "I don't know what you talking about."

- [Nido] You couldn't remember?

- [Byron] No, I remembered.

- [Nido] Oh.

- [Byron] But I said, I own what happened yesterday, but you have, my word will never happen again.

- [Nido] I see.

- [Byron] And then.

- [Nido] But it was uncontrollable.

- [Byron] Oh yeah.

- [Nido] I mean, you couldn't have, you couldn't have prevented that from happening.

- [Byron] You know, Doc.

And this, and this is my... sure.

There's always more you can do.

That's something that my mom taught me, that certainly you always give your best, but hopefully there's a recognition that whatever your best was on Monday, if you prepare, if you work, your, your best, it might be better on Tuesday.

And so sure, I mean, I, I could have been better prepared.

I could have had a conversation with a producer beforehand about what are the possibilities?

How, how likely is it that a ruling will come in today as opposed to, you know, it's day three, it's after five o'clock, they're not going to do anything today.

Yeah.

- [Nido] Yes.

So when, when did you first realize that you were stuttering?

How old were you?

- [Byron] Probably 7, 8, 9.

You know -- - [Nido] And how did you deal with peer group pressure or commentary or anything like that?

- [Byron] Silence.

Wouldn't say anything.

It's yeah, I just -- I, you know, words like stupid and slow followed me around, whispered, you know, from adults in my life, outside of my immediate family.

And so, I just kept quiet and just, you know, prayed it would go away, felt real shame about it, because I felt like I must be stupid if I can't speak like everyone else, my family, my mother, brother, and sister, you know, they would complete my sentences.

They would have conversations for me.

And it was difficult.

And I think in one of the, it's part of the reason why I became a journalist, I know for you with all of your wonderful work that you believe that it's a calling, it's what God wants you to do with your, your remarkable life.

And so I felt the same way.

So because of my early issues with literacy, with stuttering, I felt like, okay, fundamentally as a journalist, my job is to give voice to the voiceless, and I know what it means to be voiceless.

And so, hopefully I bring a level of empathy to my work because of my childhood experiences.

- [Nido] Byron, you know, a lot of people think that journalism is skewed, unfair, sometimes prejudiced.

Tell me, how is it that you make sure that you are not just factually accurate, but socially and emotionally and psychologically fair in your reporting.

- [Byron] You know.

I love you for so, so many reasons.

That's such a great question because it's so true.

Like I think sometimes people in my business get caught up in well, is it true?

You know, as, as you know, a lot of people have had their lives, professional lives, personal lives ruined because either something was thought to be true, later not to be proven true, or there wasn't sort of full context given, or we live in this sort of cancel culture now that someone has the worst day of their life and suddenly their entire lives are blown up.

And it's certainly there are instances in which some things, perhaps you should not be allowed to come back from professionally.

But with that said, one of the things I figured out early on, early in my career was there's a difference between facts and truth.

And so as journalists, it's our job to seek facts and also truths.

For instance, the fact is, slavery was legal.

The truth is, it was morally wrong.

And you have to, you have to spend time to, to do that.

I think, I want to believe I was raised right.

I was raised to believe that no one's better than me.

I'm no better than anyone else.

That all of us are deserving of grace.

And that, facts are facts.

And it's my job as a journalist to pursue facts.

People have often asked me, people of faith have asked me, do I see some conflict between my profession and my faith walk?

I say, no, not at all.

I say, I believe as a Christian and again, I'm Christian because my mom was from Apex, North Carolina, and she was Christian.

My grandma was Christian.

Therefore I'm Christian.

I will believe I was born someplace else then there I might be Muslim.

I might be Hindu, whatever, but I, I'm respectful of all faiths.

So as a Christian, my life is my pursuit in what Jesus wants, how he wants me to live my life.

I believe as a journalist, it is a pursuit of truth, a sort of human truths.

So yeah, I think I just, I, I'm, mindful, I try and gather as much information as I possibly can.

I try and I treat people the way I want to be treated.

And, and I used to, when I was younger, I wanted people to like me, right?

Who doesn't want to be liked?

But now I accept the responsibilities as a journalist.

My job is to be respectful and to be respected.

And that I would say my, my, my standard when I do a story is no matter who it's on that when the story airs, I can sit with them and their family on their couch, in their house and we can watch together.

And they may say, you suck.

That was -- but it was honest.

It was true.

And that's, that's my goal.

- [Nido] How much, how much influence do you have over a script versus a writer or researcher on the program?

- [Byron] Fortunately at Nightline, we're a very collaborative and family space.

My, my, my co-anchor Juju Chang.

I'm a little older than Juju, but we have very similar spirits.

Juju is Jewish, her, her faith and her family mean everything to her.

It kind of shapes how she lives her life.

Anyway, and so we're at that stage of our lives where it is, it's not about, puffing ourselves up.

It's about telling the best stories that we can.

And we have a wonderful team of young gifted producers.

And so I'd say like on any given story, the producers may actually, at this stage of my life, they may write 85% of the piece and I'll come in, I call it, I add a little butter, little spackle, but certainly I think when Juju does a piece, when I do a piece, it is reflective of our style of how we approach it.

- [Nido] Is it, is it true?

And I don't mean to be cynical, just trying to get, learn from you, your experience.

Is it true that the big boss sometimes just says, do this story and do it this way?

- [Byron] That's not been my experience.

Certainly you hear about them.

It's like, I, I would think the skepticism, we all have of someone else's industry of how things occur, perhaps that occurs.

That has never been my experience.

Where anyone said, you're going to have, to do it this way.

Now, certainly I'm mindful that, that, that leadership may guide.

For instance, the great legendary Walter Cronkite.

When Walter Cronkite was the anchor of the CBS Evening News, there were three major stories going on in America, the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, and the space program.

Walter Cronkite decided that the space program was where they would spend the bulk of their time, resource, and energy.

Now they would cover the other two, but he decided that was their priority.

So is it, so is that being biased?

It's just, it's just making, making a decision.

- [Nido] I mean, when you look at an evening news, you've got five or six stories in that day, a thousand stories happened in the world, - [Byron] Exactly right.

- [Nido] somebody picked five, six stories.

- [Byron] Yeah.

- [Nido] Let's, let's go through a quick set of questions.

Your hobbies?

- [Byron] Hobbies?

Golf.

Reading.

- [Nido] You have spoken back at Ohio Wesleyan University?

- [Byron] I have.

I have, I was on the board of trustees for a number of years.

It's a school that helped shape me.

As you know, I'm from Baltimore.

And if you're from Baltimore, where you went to high school means everything.

So I'm really connected to Archbishop Curley High School.

Thanks for asking.

It's an all boys Catholic high school run by Franciscans.

In fact, there's a - me and my brothers, we have this cross is for the Franciscans, very modest cross.

And that, that place really influenced my life because when I got there as a 12 year old boy, I was still learning how to read.

My stutter was severe.

I remember my, my freshmen Father Bartholomew.

He was my freshman advisor.

When we met, he says, "Byron, looking at your transcripts right now, "you're not going to college..." He says, "But.. where you are right now.

"But if you commit, we will get you there in four years."

My mother is... We're going to speak hard truth, but we're going to plant.

And so that place actually influenced my life more than Ohio Wesleyan.

Great place, grateful to, to have attended there.

But my high school, Archbishop Curley High School.

- [Nido] You've written a book.

What was the book about?

- [Byron] So I wrote, so the first one was called Step Out on Nothing.

It was a story about faith and family, you know, my own sort of background, I believe it's important to encourage people whenever you can.

I think, you know, as a journalist, I mean, I I'm, I'm a paid critic, right?

I look at, I go look at for problems, look at problems.

But I am convinced that there are lots of wonderful places on planet earth, but there's no place like the United States that we are a unique and wonderful place.

The opportunities that I've been given, the opportunities you've been given in your remarkable life.

I, right, this immigrant child who came to the U.S. with $50 in your pocket and now look at all the you've built and all the lives you've touched.

That's, as you and I both know, that's only possible in America.

So as this paid skeptic, who's, you know, who's lived a very blessed life.

I thought it was an opportunity to tell a story about, it's mostly about my mom and about my mother, elders in my church, coaches, the people who poured into me, to, to give me opportunity.

- [Nido] I watched you do an interview to moderate an interview with a former premier of Canada and a former Secretary of State to the United States.

How did you prepare for something like that?

And do you ever get nervous?

- [Byron] I don't necessarily get nervous anymore, but I get kind of hype.

I get, I get excited about the opportunity to engage with people.

I love as I'm sure you do.

I just love like the preparation.

I love the research after.

So in that case, what I did was I went and had my research team find every book, those two men ever written.

And then I said, find me five books written about them.

And so in the weeks leading up to it, I read those 12 books and then a series of articles to see, you know, what their thing was.

Then I went and looked at, the beauty of YouTube, I went and looked at their public appearances because I want to understand their cadence - [Nido] Get their style.

- [Byron] Exactly right.

Exactly.

How, how do I approach this person?

Like with, in the case of Secretary Baker?

I didn't realize he has a really good sense of humor, that he likes a good laugh.

And so I knew there would be an opportunity to position him.

And, and I, I realized that these two men cared about each other.

They've been friends for a long time.

So I knew it was important to build that connection.

And, and, and you, and it's one of the things I admire about you, how well prepared you are when you conduct interviews and this wonderful program that you have and other settings that I've seen you in.

Is that I feel like before you asked, as you ask questions, it's important that the person know that you respect them, that you value their time.

And how do you show that by being prepared, by knowing their story, right?

Cause you figure people who we get to talk to have been interviewed multiple times more than likely, right?

And they can be an autopilot.

You get them off autopilot, when you make clear to them that I care about you.

I respect you.

I've done the homework.

And so I remember I went through the, the, the, the, their two biographies these men had written and I found specific lines in their book who knew where they referenced the other.

You know, and that wasn't on page three.

Right.

That was like deep.

- [Nido] That's brilliant, by the way.

- [Byron] Yeah, and so wanting to, wanting to, to make them feel comfortable, I'm sure like you prepare in deciding you have a limited amount of time.

Here are the subject matters we want to touch upon.

Some of the best advice ever got from the late great Ed Brantley, who was a friend and mentor, when I was at CBS.

I asked Ed, what's the, what's the key to a great interview.

And Ed said, not original to him, but he said, read, read, read, listen, listen, listen.

And so I, I, I, I worked at that each time.

- [Nido] Yeah.

You know, when I look at your life, you've had an amazing life.

You're still a young man.

You've, you've had challenges growing up.

Your mom had an enormous impact on you.

You played sports, you went to a fine institution.

You've had a distinguished career as a journalist.

What lies ahead for Byron Pitts?

- That's great.

I, I'm, you know, I, I still trying to piece together what God wants me to do with my life.

You know, I enjoy my professional life.

I have other business interests outside of television.

I want to be a better servant leader.

I want to find, cause you know, like, if you've been doing something for a while, you're I was like, wow, okay.

You have more experience.

Like I've been a professional journalist for 40 years.

And in fact, I have, I've been working in television longer than most of my colleagues in Nightline have been alive.

And just wanting to share that, you know, all the, as you and I both know, so blessed to live in this great country.

So blessed to work in the profession.

I live it, trouble as it is, I still think journalism is fundamental to our great democracy and our democracy is great and journalism is a worthwhile pursuit.

So I think dabbling in that, working with the young people, I think a lot about building generational wealth.

You know, one of the things that, that I, whenever I talked to dynamic leaders about yourself, and you talk about how they, how they regiment their, their, their day, their diet, their things they do, but also talk to talk to dynamic leaders about like money.

Like how do they, cause you know, growing up poor, you know, you, you kind of live.

- [Nido] It makes a difference.

- [Byron] Right.

- [Nido] It affects what you go and how you live.

- [Byron] Exactly right.

- [Nido] Well, Byron, you are, you're an inspiration to so many.

I've seen you with young people.

I've seen you with the leaders of America and you always are the superstar.

Thank you for being with me here at Side By Side.

- [Byron] Thank you, my friend.

- [Announcer] Funding for a Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - [Narrator] Here's the those that rise and shine to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things, you make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Presenter] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

- Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.