Forrest Sawyer

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Forrest Sawyer on the live debate episode of The West Wing in 2005.

Forrest DeWitt Sawyer is a news anchor for both NBC and its cable counterpart, MSNBC. Sawyer is an occasional substitute for Brian Williams as anchor for NBC Nightly News. Prior to joining NBC, he spent 11 years with ABC News, where he anchored ABC World News Tonight Saturday and frequently substituted for Ted Koppel on Nightline. During that time he earned Emmy Awards in 1992, 1993, and 1994 while with ABC-TV's Day One and Nightline.

After starting in radio, Sawyer moved into television with Atlanta's WAGA-TV, a CBS affiliate while he was there from 1980 to 1985. While at WAGA, Sawyer shared a Peabody Award in 1982, for Paradise Saved, a documentary on Cumberland Island. He, Don Smith, and photographer George Gentry were cited for a documentary in which viewers were "treated to a quality of visual beauty not often seen on television and, at the same time, were informed, enlightened, and challenged concerning the problems of retaining a great natural heritage and a diminishing resource—the unspoiled beauty of the Atlantic Coast."http://www.peabody.uga.edu/archives/search.html

In 1985 he took over as anchorman on the CBS Morning News, holding that position until 1987. He joined ABC in 1988 as anchorman of ABC World News This Morning and also hosted "World News Sunday" before leaving that network.

In addition to his Peabody Award, he has received a total of seven National Emmy Awards, two Sigma Delta Chi Awards, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, an Associated Press Award, an Ohio State Award, an Ark Award and two American Psychological Association Awards.

He is a 1967 graduate of Kathleen High School in Lakeland, Florida. He attended the University of Florida where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.

Pop culture trivia

• Sawyer played himself as moderator in "The Debate" an episode of The West Wing which aired live and was dedicated solely to a debate between two fictitious presidential candidates.

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