This year, some of the finest media professionals are being honored in The Irish American Media Top 30.  Here are their profiles:

Margaret Brennan

Margaret Brennan is the anchor of Bloomberg Television’s InBusiness with Margaret Brennan, which airs weekdays from 10 a.m.-noon.

Since joining Bloomberg in July 2009, Brennan hosted Bloomberg Television’s first live broadcast from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she interviewed Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim bin Abdul Aziz al-Assaf and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.  She has also reported live from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and exclusively covered the Global Irish Economic Forum in September 2009.

Previously, Brennan was a general assignment reporter for CNBC and a contributor to NBC’s Today Show, Nightly News and MSNBC.

Brennan began her business news career at CNBC in 2002 as a producer for financial news legend Louis Rukeyser.

Brennan graduated with highest distinction from the University of Virginia with a BA in Foreign Affairs and Middle East studies and a minor in Arabic language. She was named an Emmerich-Wright scholar for an outstanding thesis.

As a Fulbright-Hays Scholar, Brennan studied Arabic at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan.  Brennan is a Whitehead Fellow with the Foreign Policy Association and serves on the advisory board of the Smurfit School of Business at the University College Dublin.

A third generation Irish American, Brennan’s father’s family came from Galway and Bantry Bay, and her mother’s from Sligo.

 
Patti Ann Browne

Patti Ann Browne was named news anchor for Fox News Channel in August 2000.

She joined Fox from MSNBC, where she hosted Weekend Morning Line, anchored weekday updates and breaking news, and reported from the field.

Before that, Browne worked at News 12 Long Island, a 24-hour cable news channel in New York. She co-anchored the channel's morning show and hosted Reporter Roundtable, a weekly news talk show.

Browne began her career at WLIM Radio on Long Island as morning news anchor. Her first television job was as anchor and news director of WLIG-TV 55, seen in New York City and Long Island, from which she went on to become an anchor/reporter for WSJV-TV in South Bend, Indiana.

Browne earned an MA summa cum laude from the New York Institute of Technology in New York, where she was a reporter for the school's news program LI News Tonight.

Browne also holds a BA from Fordham University, where she was news director, news anchor and Irish music host on Fordham's far-reaching radio station, WFUV-FM. Browne worked at Newsweek magazine throughout college.

She grew up in Bayside, New York. A second generation Irish American, Browne’s grandparents grew up in Co. Mayo.

Browne was aide to the grand marshal of the Glen Cove St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Long Island in 1997.

Browne lives in the New York City area with her husband and son.

 
Michael Daly

Working as a top columnist at the New York Daily News for over two decades, Michael Daly knows all about the tribes of New York Irish. His father was born outside Dublin, and his mother was a Canadian of Irish extraction.

A graduate of Yale University, Daly started journalism at Flatbush Life. He is the author of Under Ground, a novel, and The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge about the FDNY chaplain who died on September 11.

Daly lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.


Jim Dolan

Jim Dolan has been a reporter with Eyewitness News since 1986.

Dolan knew he wanted to be a reporter in New York before he finished grammar school.  Since then, he has reported on virtually every major story around the world -- the LA riots, the Oklahoma City bombing, civil wars and famine in Africa, the death of Princess Diana, the Persian Golf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Intifada in the Middle East.

Though he has reported from more than 30 countries on five continents, Dolan has always had a great love for New York because there's nothing like reporting nightly on neighborhood stories close to home, and close to the heart.

Dolan is a second generation Irish American, and native New Yorker.

Dolan’s grandparents came to the U.S from Co. Cork.

 
Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995 after having served as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau since 1986.

She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent. She also wrote a column, "On Washington," for The New York Times Magazine.

Dowd joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter in 1983. She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for The Washington Star, where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter and feature writer. When the Star closed in 1981, she went to Time magazine. 

Born in Washington, D.C., Dowd received a BA degree in English literature from Catholic University (Washington, D.C.) in 1973.

Dowd’s father, a police detective, came from Co. Clare, where the family visited many times.   Her mother was a proud Irish American, Peggy Meenehan, who led a demonstration at the British Embassy after Bloody Sunday when 14 were shot by British forces in Derry.

Peter Dunn

Peter Dunn is president of CBS Television Stations, CBS Corporation’s group of 29 owned television stations.  He was named to the position in November 2009.

Previously, Dunn has served as president and general manager of WCBS-TV New York, the flagship of CBS Television Stations, since 2005, and continues to oversee the station's day-to-day operations.

Prior to that, he was president of sales for CBS Television Stations, as well as president of its spot sales operations.

Dunn also served as president and general manager of CBS’s Philadelphia stations KYW and WPSG.

Before coming to CBS in 2002, Dunn served as executive vice president of sales and senior vice president of sales and marketing for the NBC Television Stations division. He also worked as local sales manager, national sales manager and account manager for WNBC-TV, which he joined in 1997.

From 1987-1997, Dunn worked at the ABC Television Network as an account executive for both ABC spot sales and WABC-TV. He also worked as a sales manager for Katz TV in Boston, and served as national sales manager for WHEC-TV in Rochester, New York.

 
Jim Dwyer

JIM Dwyer is a columnist at The New York Times. Dwyer began writing the “About New York” column in April 2007.

He has spent most of his professional life covering New York as a reporter, columnist and author. He joined The New York Times in May 2001 after stints at the Daily News, New York Newsday and several papers in northern New Jersey.

Born and raised in New York City, Dwyer is the son of Irish immigrants, his father from Kerry and his mother from Galway. For the last 26 years, he has lived in Washington Heights with his family.

 
Alexis Glick

ALEXIS Glick recently departed Fox Business News, where she was the vice president of business news and anchor of Money for Breakfast and The Opening Bell.

Glick joined Fox News in 2006 as the director of Business News. She became the vice president of business news responsible for overseeing all aspects of Fox Business Network’s business programming shortly before the launch of the network in 2007. Glick was the first employee and one of the executives responsible for the launch.

Prior to joining Fox News, Glick was a correspondent for NBC’s Today, where she co-anchored the third hour of the program. Before joining Today, she was the senior trading correspondent for CNBC and reported from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for CNBC’s morning show Squawk Box.

Earlier in her career, Glick was an executive director at Morgan Stanley where she headed floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange. A member of the New York Stock Exchange since 2002, she was the first and youngest woman to manage such an operation for a bulge bracket firm, and served as one of its top producers on the Listed Equity Trading Desk.

She began her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in the equities division.

Glick is a graduate of Columbia University and serves as a member of the board of directors of the College Alumni Association. She is the proud mother of three young boys.

A third generation Irish American, Glick’s father’s gamily came from Cavan and Monaghan, and her mother’s from Galway.

Kimberly Guilfoyle

Kimberly Guilfoyle joined Fox News Channel in January 2006 as the host of the one-hour crime-based program, The Lineup, which covers major breaking news, including politics and entertainment, with an emphasis on legal affairs and issues of the day. It is the highest-rated cable news program in its time slot.

She also currently serves as a legal analyst for Fox News.

Formerly of Court TV, which she joined in January 2004 as co-host of Both Sides, Guilfoyle also served as a legal analyst for ABC News, featured regularly on Good Morning America, as well as CNN's Larry King Live and Anderson Cooper 360.

She has covered major cases such as O.J. Simpson, Scott Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey, Natalee Holloway, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson.

In February 2004, Guilfoyle had a movie role as a public defender opposite Emmy Award winning actor Ed Asner in Happily Even After, which was featured at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Prior to her broadcasting career, she served as an assistant district attorney at the San Francisco and Los Angeles district attorney's offices. As managing attorney of the trial division in San Francisco, she was co-prosecutor in the case People v. Noel and Knoller, a second-degree murder trial involving a dog mauling, which received national and international attention, and was chronicled on NBC's Dateline, A&E's American Justice, and, most recently, on Animal Planet's Animal Witness.

Guilfoyle is a magna cum laude graduate of University of California, Davis and attended the University of San Francisco School of Law and Trinity College in Dublin, where she studied and was published for her research in international children's rights and European Economic Community law.

Guilfoyle presently serves as an active board member of the Gastro Esophageal Cancer Foundation and on the advisory panel for the American Bar Association.

Guilfoyle’s father’s family came from Ennis, Co. Clare.

She resides in New York City with her son, Ronan Anthony Villency.

Jack Haire

Jack Haire is CEO of PARADE Publications, a position he has held since June 2009.

A seasoned executive with vast experience in both traditional and digital media, Haire was chosen to succeed PARADE chairman and CEO Walter Anderson.  Prior to joining PARADE, he led his own company, Haire Media Ventures, which was formed in 2006 and specialized in innovative digital advertising and distribution strategies.  He advised companies including CNET Networks, Quigo Technologies, Hallmark Cards, Outbrain, and UpCompany, among others.

Haire also serves as a director of LodgeNet Interactive, Phoenix Companies, and Top Ten Reviews.

Haire spent 28 years at Time Warner Inc. During his tenure there, he was executive vice president of Time Inc. and president of the Fortune/Money Group, where he helped Fortune to achieve its best years in circulation, advertising market share and profitability.

He was also publisher of Time magazine (1993-1998). On his watch, both Time and Fortune were chosen as Adweek's Hottest Magazine, measured by three year advertising growth.

He also partnered with CNN on the launch of CNNMoney.com, one of the web's most successful and profitable finance sites.

Haire’s great grandparents came from counties Cork and Donegal. Like so many others, they came to New York through Ellis Island to escape the Famine. The family settled in the New York area but always retained ties to the home country.

Haire lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children.

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity joined the Fox News Channel in 1996, where he currently hosts his self-titled program, Hannity. Since Hannity debuted last year, it has averaged 2.8 million viewers each night.

Previously, Hannity co-hosted Hannity & Colmes with Alan Colmes for 12 years.  Hannity has become one of the most popular radio personalities nationwide as the host of ABC Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show, syndicated to more than 500 stations and heard in all of the top 50 markets with a loyal listenership of 13.5 million.

Hannity is currently ranked number two in Talker Magazine's Top 100 Talk Hosts in America.

Hannity has interviewed many key political figures including President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Reverend Jesse Jackson and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

Prior to his roles with WABC and FNC, Hannity hosted a radio talk show in Atlanta on WGST-AM and was a frequent substitute for fellow talk show host Rush Limbaugh on WABC in New York.

He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Let Freedom Ring and Deliver Us From Evil.

All four of Hannity’s grandparents came to the U.S. from Ireland, his paternal grandparents from Down, and maternal from Cork.

Hannity lives on Long Island with his wife and two children.

 
Magee Hickey

Magee Hickey is a reporter for CBS 2 News in New York, where she contributes to the early morning, noon, 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts as a featured correspondent.  She has spent more than 27 years covering local news in New York City.

For the past eight years, Hickey has been getting up at 2 a.m. every morning to report for News This Morning, the successful morning newscast from 5-7 a.m. Hickey was the first anchor of the highly successful Weekend Today in New York newscast.

She has won wide recognition for her investigative journalism, including an Emmy Award in 1992 for her yearlong reports on New York City's Emergency Medical Services.

Hickey graduated from Brown University in 1977.  Hickey’s father's grandfather, Maurice Francis Hickey, came to the U.S from Co. Clare in the early 1850s and founded M.F. Hickey Concrete Company, which was a successful company that supplied the concrete for much of the building boom in Brooklyn in the first half of the 20th century. Her father, Lawrence F. Hickey, served as president of the company for many years.

Hickey’s mother, Jean Elizabeth Hogan, an actress and a model, was also an Irish American. Hickey’s parents met at an Irish wake.

A native New Yorker, she resides in Manhattan with her husband and their two daughters.

 
John Hogan

John Hogan has been president and chief executive officer of Clear Channel Radio, a division of Clear Channel Communications, since August of 2002.

Hogan’s innovative vision for the radio industry has helped make Clear Channel Radio the leading and most evolutionary radio broadcaster in the U.S.  Among the accolades for his leadership, Radio Ink named Hogan Radio Executive of the Year in 2005, introducing initiatives like Less is More and resources like the Creative Services Group to improve the value of radio to listeners and advertisers.

In addition, Radio & Records has named him Group Executive of the Year for the past five consecutive years.

In addition to his responsibilities at Clear Channel, Hogan has further served the radio industry by dedicating his time and energies to several key organizations that make a difference in radio and beyond.

Hogan is currently on the board of the National Association of Broadcasters, the Advertising Council, American Women in Radio and Television and the Emma L. Bowen Foundation for Minority Interest in Media.

Hogan graduated from Lake Forest University in 1979.  He resides in San Antonio, Texas with his wife Nancy and their daughter, Makenzi.

A second generation Irish American, Hogan’s grandparents came to the U.S. from Killarney, Co. Kerry.

Jackie Hyland

Jackie Hyland is currently weekend anchor for PIX News at 6:30 and PIX News at Ten in New York.

Hyland worked at WPIX from 2000-2005 and returned to the station in August of 2009 for the weekend anchor position. She is also reporting three days a week for the weekday broadcasts of PIX News at 6:30 and PIX News at Ten.

Hyland was previously anchor/correspondent at ABC News NOW, where she anchored live coverage and news briefs for ABC News NOW, ABC's digital network.  She also filled in as an anchor on World News Now and America This Morning and contributed to Good Morning America.

Prior to joining ABC News, Hyland was a reporter and anchor for WFAA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. While at WFAA, Jackie anchored the morning show, hosted Good Morning Texas and anchored the midday show.

She joined the station in 2005 from WPIX-TV in New York City, where she had worked as a reporter and anchor since 2000.

Hyland began her career in journalism with an internship at Good Morning America. She later worked at ABC Sports on the production team for TV's Daytime Emmy Awards broadcast.

During this time she also filed news reports for a local radio station and wrote a column about life in New York for the Irish newspaper, the Leitrim Observer. She transitioned to local news in 1995 and worked at News 12 Long Island and News 12 Westchester as both a producer and a reporter.

The New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recognized Hyland's work with a 2004 Emmy Award. She has been nominated for an Emmy six times, a Folio Award and two Associated Press Awards.

Although born in New York City, Hyland and her family moved to Leitrim when she was nine years old. During a decade in Ireland, Hyland became a proficient performer of Irish folk song and dance. She also modeled and appeared in several Irish magazines and newspapers.

Eventually Hyland returned to the U.S., where she attended St. John's University in New York, graduating cum laude with a degree in communications and a minor in business.

Hyland is married and has two daughters. Her mother was born and raised in Mayo, and her father in Leitrim, where her parents currently reside.

Greg Kelly

Greg Kelly joined Good Day New York on Fox 5 in July 2008, where he co-hosts the popular morning news program.  Most recently, Kelly was an anchor and correspondent for the Fox News Channel based in New York.

Kelly joined Fox News in 2002 and went on to serve as a White House correspondent from 2005-2007. He has also covered the war in Iraq extensively, including four long-term assignments in Baghdad.

During the 2003 invasion, he was embedded with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade. He was the first television reporter to deliver live pictures of U.S. forces infiltrating Baghdad, as well as exclusive reports of the storming of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace.

Prior to joining Fox News Channel, Kelly was a reporter for New York 1 News, where he covered New York City politics and the September 11 attacks.

He started his career in journalism as an anchor and reporter for NewsChannel 34, the ABC affiliate in Binghamton, New York.  Prior to this, Kelly spent nine years as a fighter pilot in the United States Marine Corps.

A licensed commercial pilot, he currently holds the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves.

Kelly is a graduate of Fordham University with a BA degree in political science. Kelly and his family have traced their Irish heritage back to Co. Cork.

Keith Kelly

Keith J. Kelly has been writing the must-read “Media Ink” column for the New York Post since July 1998. He consistently breaks stories on the inner workings of the major companies in the magazine, book, and newspaper publishing businesses.

Kelly was once termed "New York's most influential media columnist" by New York magazine. He jumped to the Post from the Daily News.

Kelly served as a founding member of the New York City-based Kelly Gang Inc., which includes Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and other notables in the media world with the surname Kelly. It evolved from a social group into a charitable organization following the death of author/journalist Michael Kelly, who became the first American journalist killed in Iraq in the Iraq War in 2002.

Kelly has raised approximately $400,000 for causes as diverse as The Wounded Warrior Project to Catholic Charities of New Orleans and the Lower East Side Tenament Musuem.

Kelly freelanced out of Belfast in 1980 and was the first reporter to break the news of the looming IRA hunger strike in Long Kesh Prison. Over the years, Kelly has contributed stories on the troubles in Northern Ireland and its New York connections to The Nation, The Boston Globe, Newsday, USA Today, America Magazine, Catholic News Service, Religious News Service and for years throughout the 1980s was a New York correspondent for the Dublin daily, The Irish Press.

A fourth generation Irish American, Kelly traces his Irish ancestry to Westmeath and Mayo.

Kelly is married to J. Patricia Walsh, the daughter of the late Kerry football great Eddie Walsh. They live in the Stuyvesant Town neighborhood of Manhattan with their three boys, Ruairi, Luke and Eamon.

Megyn Kelly

Megyn Kelly currently anchors America Live, a daytime news program on Fox News Channel which launched in February.

She previously co-anchored America's Newsroom with Bill Hemmer, and appears weekly on The O'Reilly Factor in a segment entitled “The Kelly File.”

Throughout her tenure with Fox, Kelly has covered breaking news and has reported live from numerous major events. During the 2008 election season, she covered the Democratic National Convention live from Denver and the Republican National Convention live from St. Paul.

She also reported live from Blacksburg, Virginia after the 2007 Virginia Tech campus massacre, and from Huntington, Utah as rescue efforts were underway for six trapped miners.

Kelly notably covered the Duke University rape case involving three of the school's lacrosse players. Reporting from Durham, North Carolina, she broke new details that would ultimately help exonerate the defendants.

Kelly joined Fox in 2004. Prior to her anchor role, she served as a general assignment reporter based in Washington, where she provided wall-to-wall coverage of the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Chief Justice John Roberts.

She also reported on the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the death of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as the indictments of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay.

Before joining Fox, Kelly served as a general assignment reporter for ABC News affiliate WJLA-TV in Washington. During her tenure at WJLA, Kelly covered national and local stories of interest, including the 2004 presidential race and the D.C. sniper cases.

Previously, Kelly practiced law as a corporate litigator. She earned her BA degree in political science from Syracuse University and a JD from Albany Law School, where she also served as editor of the Albany Law Review.

 
Pat Kiernan

Pat Kiernan is the morning anchor on NY1 in New York.

Kiernan’s career in broadcast journalism began while he was attending the University of Alberta's Faculty of Business in Edmonton, Canada. Upon the completion of his bachelor of commerce degree, he accepted a full-time job as a general assignment reporter for CFRN television in Canada's fourth-largest TV market.

While at the CTV network-affiliated station, he anchored a weekly business news magazine program and at various times worked as the station's assistant news director, assignment editor, producer and news anchor.

Prior to joining Time Warner and NY1, he was the senior producer of the prime-time newscast ITV News at Ten on CITV, one of Canada's satellite superstations, where his duties included an on-air role as host of "Your Money," a popular segment he created.

Kiernan and his wife Dawn moved to New York in March of 1996. He joined the Time Warner family as the anchor and producer of the Fortune Business Report, and was named NY1's morning anchor in 1997.

Kiernan has traced his Irish heritage back as far as the Famine. He believes his ancestors came from Monaghan and Cork.

Connell McShane

Connell McShane joined Fox Business Network as a correspondent in September 2007. Prior to joining Fox, McShane worked at Bloomberg Television where he served as a news reporter and an anchor working on Evening Edition, On the Markets and Marketweek.

He also broadcasted live reports from both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Before Bloomberg Television,

McShane co-anchored the syndicated morning show The First Word on Bloomberg Radio. He began his career in sports broadcasting. He served as the play-by-play voice of minor league baseball’s Pittsfield Mets during the 1998 season.

A graduate of Fordham University with a BA degree in communication and media studies, McShane was named a finalist in both the New York Metro Achievement in Radio Awards and the New York State Associated Press Broadcasters' Association.

McShane’s father was born and raised in Kilcar, Co. Donegal, where McShane remembers spending many summers there as a child with his family.

McShane and his wife live on Long Island with their three children.

Megan Meany

Megan Meany joined WNBC’s Today in New York weekday morning team in June 2008 as traffic reporter from 4:30-7:00 a.m.  Meany is a member of the Shadow Traffic organization and brings with her their extensive resources and in-depth expertise in covering traffic in the tri-state area.

Meany also brings a new look to the broadcast by reporting live each morning from WNBC’s Studio 7E, instead of from the Shadow Traffic headquarters located across the Hudson River in Rutherford, New Jersey.

Meany has worked in many different capacities within local, cable and network television.  Most recently she worked with E! News as a freelance entertainment reporter interviewing A-List celebrities, and at the Style Network covering the New York fashion scene.

Previously, Meany was the host of Help Wanted, a prime time reality show on TLC. She got her on-air start at CBS's Saturday Early Show covering trends.

In addition to her on air work, Meany has 10-plus years experience producing network and local programming. 

Meany's interest in journalism started in print as an editorial assistant and reporter for the Boston Herald newspaper.  Her bylines included front-page news, the real estate section's "Home of the Week" feature, and a bi-monthly piece on street fashions.

A Connecticut native, Meany attended Trinity College in Hartford where she earned a degree in English along with a minor in women’s studies.

Meany is a fourth generation Irish American and traces her roots back to Co. Clare and Co. Mayo. She resides in Manhattan with her husband and son.

Erin Moriarty

Erin Moriarty has been a correspondent for 48 HOURS on CBS since 1990.  She has covered the death of Princess Diana, the JonBenet Ramsey investigation, the murder of financier Edmund Safra, and the war in Iraq.

Before that, Moriarty was the consumer correspondent for CBS This Morning and the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.

Drawing on her training as a lawyer, Moriarty has examined some of the most important social and legal issues of the day, including DNA testing of evidence in death-row cases, the abortion controversy and battered woman's syndrome.

Moriarty has received numerous honors, including nine national Emmy Awards, a 2001 Overseas Press Club Award for her work on 48 HOURS and three Association of Women in Radio and Television Gracie Allen Awards for the weekly talk show that she co-hosted with Nancy Giles on WPHT Radio in Philadelphia (2003-04).

In both 2000 and 2003, she was honored with a Top 100 Award from Irish America magazine. In 1988, Moriarty received the Outstanding Consumer Media Service Award presented by the Consumer Federation of America for "her many contributions of both local and national significance as a consumer reporter."

Prior to joining CBS News in 1986, she was an award‑winning consumer reporter for the NBC owned and operated WMAQ-TV Chicago (1983‑86).  She was also a reporter in Columbus (Ohio) at the NBC affiliate WCMH-TV (1979-80), Baltimore at the ABC affiliate WJZ-TV (1980-82) and Cleveland at CBS affiliate WJKW-TV (1982-83).

Born in Cincinnati and raised in Columbus, Moriarty graduated from Ohio State University, Phi Beta Kappa, with a degree in behavioral sciences, and received a law degree from the university in 1977.

A third generation Irish American, Moriarty’s great-grandfather came to the U.S. after the Civil War from Cork. He came through Boston and then worked on the railroad, which took him to Ohio.

Moriarty lives in New York with her husband, who is also an attorney, and their son.

 
Mary Murphy

Mary Murphy is the Emmy Award winning, chief correspondent for the PIX Investigates unit on the PIX News at Ten in New York.

While a student at Queens College in Flushing, Murphy interned in the WCBS-TV newsroom, and after graduating magna cum laude, she was hired by WPIX-TV Channel 11 as a production assistant, working her way up the ladder to staff reporter.

In 1986, WCBS-TV hired Murphy as a general assignment reporter and later, as a breaking news correspondent. Her coverage of the Joel Steinberg and John Gotti trials garnered two Emmy Award wins by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS).

In 1993, Murphy returned to WPIX-TV as a special correspondent, where she was assigned to major stories, with hosting duties on 11 News Close-up, plus anchor work.

At WPIX, Murphy has continued to win numerous awards, including 14 Emmys (for a total of 16). In 1995, she was honored by the American Women in Radio and Television for a documentary called Schindler: The Real Story, a report on Holocaust survivors living in New York and New Jersey who were the inspiration for the Steven Spielberg film. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Edward R. Murrow award for writing.

Murphy’s work has been nominated for four Emmy Awards this year, one for anchoring a 10 p.m. newscast, and several of them for investigative reporting.

While weekend co-anchor of the PIX News at Ten, Murphy reported on some of the biggest stories of the last decade. Both Murphy’s parents, James and Mary, were born in Ireland, her father in Mayo and her mother in Galway. Murphy’s father came by boat to America in the late 1940s.

Murphy’s parents met at an Irish dance hall in Rockaway Beach, Queens. The Murphy family was raised in Queens, New York.

Murphy has been to Ireland five times, most recently with her then 10-year-old son.

 
Soledad O'Brien

Soledad O’Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN. Since 2003, O’Brien has reported breaking news from around the globe and has produced award-winning and record-breaking documentaries.

O’Brien’s most recent projects, Latino in America Black in America, have been critically acclaimed. O'Brien was part of the coverage teams that earned CNN a George Foster Peabody award for its Katrina coverage and an Alfred I. duPont Award for its coverage of the tsunami.

Her numerous other awards include a Gracie Allen Award in 2007 for her reporting from Cyprus on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict as well as her reports from the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The NAACP honored her with its President’s Award in 2007 for her humanitarian efforts and journalistic excellence.

In 2008, she was the first recipient of the Soledad O’Brien Freedom’s Voice Award from the Morehouse School of Medicine for being a catalyst for social change. Also in 2008, O’Brien was the first recipient of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Goodermote Humanitarian Award for her efforts while reporting on the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Southeast Asia tsunami.

O'Brien came to CNN from NBC News where she anchored the network’s Weekend Today since July 1999. Prior, O'Brien anchored MSNBC's award-winning technology program The Site. O'Brien joined NBC News in 1991 and was based in New York as a field producer for Nightly News and Today.

Before her time at NBC, she served three years as a local reporter and bureau chief for the NBC affiliate KRON in San Francisco. She began her career as an associate producer and news writer at the then-NBC affiliate WBZ-TV in Boston.

O’Brien’s father is Australian Irish, and she has been to Ireland many times. She lives in New York City with her husband and four children.


Bill O'Reilly

Bill O’Reilly is host of The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel.

O’Reilly also is a weekly columnist and published author with many best-selling books, the most recent, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, holding a place on The New York Times best-seller list since it was published in 2008.

O’Reilly started his broadcasting career in Scranton, Pennsylvania, before moving on to report and anchor in other places such as Dallas, Boston and New York. His national exposure began with CBS and ABC News, and as host of the first version of Inside Edition. It was in 1996 that O'Reilly landed at Fox News.

O’Reilly has accumulated many awards, including three Emmys, and a special 2008 Governor's Award.

Although born in Manhattan, O’Reilly was raised on Long Island. His bachelor's degree is in history from Marist College, and he has a master's in broadcast journalism from Boston University, as well as a master's degree in public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

O’Reilly’s paternal grandparents came to the U.S. from Co. Cavan.

 
Kristen Powers

Kirsten Powers is a political analyst on Fox News, appearing on The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity, as well as on the morning Fox News Radio show Brian and the Judge.

Powers is also a columnist for the New York Post. Formerly a columnist for American Prospect Online, Powers has also written articles for USA Today, Elle, the New York Observer, Salon and The Wall Street Journal.

Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Powers served in the Clinton administration as the deputy assistant U.S. trade representative for public affairs. She was also the vice president for international communications at America Online. Powers was formerly a vice president at the AOL-Time Warner Foundation.

Powers has worked for the New York State Democratic Committee, was the press secretary for Andrew Cuomo for Governor and communications director on the mayoral campaign of C. Virginia Fields.

Powers has consulted for a variety of non-profit organizations including Human Rights First and the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW).
   
Trish Regan

Trish Regan is an anchor on CNBC's The Call, which airs weekdays 11 a.m.-noon.

An Emmy nominated correspondent, Regan also reports for CNBC's documentary unit.  In addition, she provides regular economic reports and analysis for NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams and Today.

Regan recently reported an in-depth hour on the underground marijuana industry entitled Marijuana Inc.: Inside America’s Pot Industry. Her investigation exposed a multi-billion dollar underground trade that authorities are nearly powerless to stop.

Regan has reported extensively on international economic issues.  She traveled to the Tri-Border region of South America for an investigation into terrorist financing.

Regan joined CNBC from CBS News, where she was a correspondent reporting for the CBS Evening News and The Early Show, and contributed to 48 HOURS and Face the Nation.

Previously, Regan was a television correspondent for CBS MarketWatch, contributing to Marketwatch.com and CBS News.

In 2002, her work at CBS MarketWatch earned her the Most Outstanding Young Broadcast Journalist Award from the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists.

Prior to MarketWatch, Regan reported for Bloomberg Television.

Regan began her career working for Goldman, Sachs.  She graduated cum laude from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in U.S. history.

A third generation Irish American, Regan’s paternal great grandparents were Waterford, and her maternal great grandparents were from Cork.

Sam Ryan

SAM Ryan joined WCBS-TV and CBS Sports in June 2006. Ryan serves as CBS 2’s sports anchor for CBS 2 News at 6 and 11 p.m. on Monday through Wednesday evenings, as well as serving as a studio host for college football at CBS College Sports.

She also contributes to CBS Sports’ coverage of the NFL on CBS and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.

Previously, Ryan served as sideline reporter for ESPN and ESPN2’s coverage of the National Hockey League playoffs, including the Stanley Cup finals on ESPN and ABC. In 2004, she added reporting duties for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball telecasts.

Before joining ESPN and ABC Sports, Ryan worked as a sports anchor and reporter for WABC-TV. In addition, she also has reported for WFAN radio in New York, News 12 Long Island, WVIT in Hartford, Connecticut, and Fox Sports in New York, where she served as a reporter and anchor for the New York Sports Report.

During her career Ryan has reported on many diverse sporting events, including 2005 Monday Night Football on ABC, Super Bowl XL pre-game (ABC), the Little League World Series (2003-‘05), the 1996 Summer Olympics (ABC Radio Network), the 2000 Subway Series between the Yankees and the Mets (Fox Sports New York and Madison Square Garden Network) and women’s college basketball (Fox Sports).

She won a local Emmy Award in 1999 for Outstanding Series Feature and garnered a local Associated Press Award in 2000 and a New York Broadcasters Association Award in 2007.

In addition to her on-air work, Ryan is a national spokesperson for the March of Dimes, helping to generate awareness of its Prematurity Campaign.

A second generation Irish American, Ryan’s grandmother Mary O'Grady, originally from Galway, lived with her family on Long Island, leaving Ryan with strong a Irish identity, something she wishes to pass on to her children.

Ryan and her husband currently reside on Long Island with their two children.

Kristen Shaughnessy

Kristen Shaughnessy has been with NY1 since 1995 as the station's weekend anchor and breaking news reporter.

When the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11, 2001, Shaughnessy was one of the first on the scene.

Shaughnessy may be one of the city's only television reporters to grow up in a house without TV. Her family's television set broke when she was very young, and her parents decided that the family would be better off reading.

Shaughnessy worked first in radio and then at a television station in upstate New York before coming to NY1.

Shaughnessy has been able to trace her roots back to the mid 19th century, from the south west of Ireland.

Shaughnessy is married to Joe Bush, a professional golfer. They live in New York with their two daughters, Jamie and Kara.

Kate Sullivan

Kate Sullivan joined WCBS-TV in April 2006 as co-anchor of CBS 2 News This Morning with Maurice DuBois, weekdays from 5-7 a.m.  In addition, she also co-anchors CBS 2 News at Noon.

A native of New England, Sullivan most recently anchored KATV’s Live at Five and Channel 7 News at 6 in Little Rock, Arkansas.

She joined KATV in August 2002, was promoted to Live at Five news anchor and in September 2003, and took on lead anchor responsibilities as well as special assignment reporting.

Sullivan covered 9/11 from New York, where she brought back the reality of Ground Zero and the stories of Arkansans who lost loved ones in one of the greatest tragedies of our generation.

Before KATV, Sullivan worked as a general assignment reporter and intern at WSBT in South Bend, Indiana and at WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island.

Sullivan has won several awards, including an Emmy Award and the Associated Press First Place award for breaking news.

Sullivan graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame. Known on air as Kate Sullivan, Mary-Catherine Elizabeth Sullivan is named after three great-aunts all of Irish heritage.

A fifth generation Irish American, Sullivan’s ancestors on both sides came from Co. Cork. Sullivan has traveled to Ireland, and feels a connection between the Irish flair for storytelling and her journalism profession.

She currently resides in Manhattan.

Brian Williams

Brian Williams is the seventh anchor and managing editor in the history of NBC Nightly News, which represents the largest single daily source of news in America.

Recently, Williams became the most honored network evening news anchor. He received four Edward R. Murrow awards, his fifth Emmy Award, the duPont-Columbia University Award and the industry's highest honor, the George Foster Peabody Award. Most were given for his work in New Orleans while covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and all were awarded to Williams in only his second year on the job.

Williams was the first and only network evening news anchor to report from New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit, and was the only network news anchor to report from the Superdome during the storm. He remained in New Orleans to report on the aftermath and destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and continues to travel back and forth to the region to cover the recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Originally from New Jersey, Williams attended George Washington University, and the Catholic University of America. After working in the lobbying arm of the National Association of Broadcasters, Williams began his broadcasting career at KOAM-TV in Pittsburg, Kansas in 1981. A year later he moved back to Washington, D.C. and worked at WTTG-TV as general assignment reporter.
Williams lives in Connecticut with his family.