Jamie McIntyre
Blogger, Professor, Lecturer, Military-Media Analyst
Jamie McIntyre’s journalism career spans four decades, ranging from his beginnings as a hustling local news reporter at WTOP radio in Washington D.C. to an internationally renowned television correspondent covering military affairs for CNN from his base at the Pentagon.
Currently McIntyre is providing consulting services for news organizations seeking expertise in national security issues, writing a weblog on the military and media, (Jamie McIntyre’s Behind Frenemy Lines), and teaching news reporting and video production while finishing his Master of Arts in Journalism at the University of Maryland. He can also be heard from time to time on his old alma mater WTOP, anchoring newscasts, and providing commentary and analysis on national security, as well as anchoring newscasts on NPR, heard on 25 million stations nationwide.
He is a popular lecturer on media trends and national security issues, and often appears as analyst on CNN, FOX, and other radio and television outlets
For 16 years, McIntyre served as CNN’s primary national security reporter, first as Military Affairs Correspondent, and then as Senior Pentagon Correspondent. When he left CNN in 2008, he held the distinction of having served longer than any previous CNN correspondent covering a single beat.
Over the years his sources deep inside the Pentagon allowed McIntyre to score many firsts for the network, including breaking the news early on a Sunday morning in December 2003 that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had been captured by U.S. forces.
On September 11, 2001 McIntyre was in the Pentagon when American Airlines flight 77 hit the building, and reported extensively from the scene. In March of the following year, he obtained the only known images of the plane hitting the building, which were broadcast first by CNN. The government would not officially release the video for years, and then only after the result of a FOIA suit.
From 1992 to 2008, McIntyre covered conflicts in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, mostly from his office inside the Pentagon, but also flying to hotspots around the globe. During that time, McIntyre traveled to more than 60 countries, logged more than a half-million air miles, circumnavigated the globe more than once, and reported from war zones - often accompanying senior Pentagon officials and U.S. military officers.
McIntyre has enjoyed wide respect both from the officials he covered, and from the reporters he competed against. In his 2006 book Fiasco, Pulitzer prize-winning Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks described a confrontation in which McIntyre stood down Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and offered this assessment: “McIntyre’s easygoing persona often obscures the toughness of his reporting.”
In his novel Dragon Fire, former Defense Secretary William Cohen admits he based a fictional CNN Pentagon correspondent on McIntyre, describing him as “a first-rate journalist, who played it straight with the news, but never cut [the defense secretary] any slack.”
McIntyre has won numerous awards over the years, but is particularly proud of an in-depth report produced in collaboration with investigative producer Scott Bronstein. “An Investigation into the Death of Pat Tillman” earned CNN an Emmy nomination in 2007 for Outstanding Investigative Journalism in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast.
Prior to joining CNN as a full-time correspondent in 1992, McIntyre worked as a freelance reporter for the network, and also served as host of CNN’s “International Correspondents,” a weekly roundtable discussion with foreign journalists based in Washington.
From 1991-1992 McIntyre was the freelance “Voice of C-SPAN” doing much of the cable network’s announcing, and recording all its image breaks.
From 1989-1991 he was host and senior writer for the Sunday morning news magazine program Capital Edition on Washington, D.C.’s WUSA-TV, for which he was honored with two local Emmy awards.
Before that, McIntyre spent 12 years at Washington’s all-news WTOP radio as a news editor and reporter, covering local and regional news, with an emphasis on transportation and Maryland politics.
In 1976 McIntyre earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcasting from the University of Florida School of Journalism and Communications, where he received several awards for excellence from both the Society of Professional Journalists and Florida television station WJXT. In April 2002, McIntyre was named a “Distinguished Alumnus” of the University’s College of Journalism and Communications.
Aside from his journalistic accomplishments, McIntyre is also known for his keen sense of humor. In his first foray into stand-up comedy in 2006 he was named “Third Funniest Reporter on the Planet” in a charity competition at the Laugh Factory in New York City. Later that year McIntyre also placed third in the “Funniest Celebrity in Washington” contest at the DC Improv. And in 2010 he was the judge's choice as "DC's Funniest Reporter," at the Comedia del'Media charity event at the National Press Club.
And in 2006, Jamie McIntyre was honored to be among a select group of people named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” See cover here:
