Michael Isikoff
Encyclopedia
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of American television network NBC. It first started broadcasting in February 21, 1940. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is...
, formerly with the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
magazine Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
. He joined Newsweek as an investigative correspondent in June, 1994, and has written extensively on the U.S. government’s War on Terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
, the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
Beginning in 2004, human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to public attention...
, campaign finance
Campaign finance
Campaign finance refers to all funds that are raised and spent in order to promote candidates, parties or policies in some sort of electoral contest. In modern democracies such funds are not necessarily devoted to election campaigns. Issue campaigns in referendums, party activities and party...
and congressional ethics abuses, presidential politics and other national issues.
On July 1, 2010, Isikoff became the national investigative correspondent for NBC News.
Isikoff had been prepared to break the Monica Lewinsky
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Samille Lewinsky is an American woman with whom United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship" while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996...
scandal, but several hours before going to print, the article was killed by top Newsweek executives. As a result, the story broke first on Matt Drudge
Matt Drudge
Matthew Nathan Drudge is the American creator and editor of the Drudge Report, a news aggregation website. Drudge is self-described as being conservative and populist. Drudge has also authored a book and hosted a radio show and a television show.-Early years:Matthew Drudge was raised in Takoma...
's Drudge Report
Drudge Report
The Drudge Report is a news aggregation website. Run by Matt Drudge with the help of Joseph Curl and Charles Hurt, the site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events as well as links to many...
the following morning. His book on the subject, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
.
In January 2007, Isikoff married Washington, DC political gossip columnist Mary Ann Akers
Mary Ann Akers
Mary Ann Akers is a political gossip columnist. She currently writes The Sleuth for washingtonpost.com and contributes to the print edition of the Washington Post. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. Before joining washingtonpost.com, Akers wrote Heard on the Hill, Roll Call's...
, who currently writes "The Sleuth" for washingtonpost.com.
Career
Isikoff received his A.B. from Washington University in 1974, with a junior-year-abroad at the University of Durham, England, and obtained a masters from the Medill School of JournalismMedill School of Journalism
The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University which offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It has consistently been one of the top-ranked schools in Journalism in the United States...
from Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
in 1976. He graduated from Syosset High School on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
in 1970. Isikoff is the co-author, with The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
reporter David Corn
David Corn
David Corn is an American political journalist and author and the chief of the Washington bureau for Mother Jones. He has been Washington editor for The Nation and appeared regularly on FOX News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and BloggingHeads.tv opposite James Pinkerton or other media...
, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War, a 2006 book about the selling of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
to the US public and the ensuing Plame scandal. The book was a New York Times best-seller.
His online column with fellow journalist Mark Hosenball
Mark Hosenball
Mark Hosenball is an investigative correspondent at Newsweek. He started there in November 1993, after working at Dateline NBC as an investigative producer. He also worked at The Sunday Times, the Evening Standard, Time Out, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic...
, “Terror Watch,” won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists
Society of Professional Journalists
The Society of Professional Journalists , formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is one of the oldest organizations representing journalists in the United States. It was established in April 1909 at DePauw University, and its charter was designed by William Meharry Glenn. The ten founding members of...
for best investigative report
Investigative report
An investigative report is a document that is meant to provide information on a certain topic that is not easily obtained. It is meant to present the reader with a wealth of easily understood information and usually contains an interview or two on the subject...
ing online. Isikoff was a part of the Newsweek team that won the Overseas Press Club
Overseas Press Club
The Overseas Press Club of America was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member...
’s most prestigious award, the 2001 Ed Cunningham Memorial Award for best magazine reporting from abroad for Newsweek’s coverage of the war on terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
.
In the May 9, 2005 issue of Newsweek, Isikoff co-wrote an article that stated that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay
Camp X-Ray
Camp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Joint Task Force Guantanamo on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.The first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002....
"in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
down a toilet." Detainees had earlier made similar complaints but this was the first time a government source had appeared to confirm the story. The article caused widespread rioting and massive anti-American protests throughout some parts of the Islamic world (causing at least 17 deaths in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
). The magazine later retracted the story after noting that the anonymous official who was their source subsequently could not remember important details. A subsequent June 4, 2005 report by the Pentagon, however, confirmed multiple instances of desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo, including one incident in which urine was splashed on Koran. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8090656/ns/us_news-security/
Isikoff has been a contributing blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ger at The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
.
He has appeared on the Democracy Now!
Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
show.
External links
- MSNBC/Newsweek - Meet Newsweek - Michael Isikoff, Investigative Correspondent
- Michael Isikoff profile - Crown Publishing GroupCrown Publishing Group-External links:*...
- MSNBC/Newsweek - National News - Column: Terror Watch
- Michael Isikoff Blog - Huffington Post