Wolf Blitzer Biography
Wolf Blitzer is an American news anchor working for CNN as one of the principal anchors at the network and the host of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer since 2005. He joined the CNN news team in 1990, after previously working for The Jerusalem Post.
Wolf Blitzer Career
Blitzer is the anchor of the show The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, which airs weekdays at 6 p.m. ET and gives in-depth reports on the day’s breaking, international, and political events. Blitzer has worked for CNN for 33 years. The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer has been on the air for 18 years and is one of the longest-running CNN shows. It is known for its one-on-one talks with important people who are making news around the world.
Blitzer recently talked to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, during protests against a new law that limits the power of Israel’s top court to check the government. Throughout the 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, he also had private meetings with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. This was happening while Americans were still dealing with the effects of inflation caused by the pandemic. These are just a few of Blitzer’s recent talks that have changed the news and conversations around the world and in the United States.
Blitzer has always been dedicated to reporting the news, no matter what time or day it is. This summer, he was live from London as the world watched the armed uprising in Russia started by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner paramilitary group. Blitzer was the host of several Democratic presidential town halls and CNN’s January debate in Iowa during the 2020 election cycle. He also led special coverage of Election Night in America for the 2020 election, which went on for a few days until CNN was the first to predict that Joe Biden would win, with Wolf Blitzer making the prediction. He was also very important in getting the network to cover more of the coronavirus pandemic. During the worst of the pandemic in 2020, he often hosted seven days a week.
That year, Blitzer was the host of the CNN Republican Primary Debates in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Houston, Texas. He also hosted the CNN Democratic Primary Debate in Brooklyn, New York. As a lead reporter on important primary and caucus nights, as well as the Emmy-winning election night, Blitzer was a key part of CNN’s election coverage during America’s Choice 2012. He was the host of three CNN debates for the Republican presidential nomination, including the first-ever Tea Party discussion. During the 2008 election, Blitzer led CNN’s coverage of the presidential primary meetings and campaigns, which won a Peabody Award. A CNN Emmy winner, he was also in charge of “America Votes 2006” and “America Votes 2004.” During the inaugurations of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, he was also in charge of the network’s programming.
Blitzer is known for more than just his political coverage. He also writes in-depth stories about foreign events. Back in January 2013, Blitzer went to Cairo, Egypt, to meet with President Mohamed Morsy at the presidential house. In December 2010, he was given special permission to visit North Korea with Bill Richardson, who was governor of New Mexico at the time. While in the country as the only network reporter, he gave viewers a look inside the communist, totalitarian government by reporting from Kim II-sung University and the streets of Pyongyang that most people have never seen.
Blitzer is known for his knowledge of the Middle East. He reported from Israel during the war between that country and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, and he returned to the area with CNN host Anderson Cooper in 2012. In 2005, Blitzer was the only news anchor from the United States to cover the Dubai Ports World story in person in the UAE. When the war in Iraq turned two years old in 2005, he went to the Middle East to write on it. In 2003, Blitzer covered the war in Iraq from the Persian Gulf.
As the son of Holocaust survivors, Blitzer has spent his whole career working to teach people about the Holocaust and fight racism. Blitzer went to Poland in 2023 to take part in the 35th International March of the Living and to remember the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which happened 80 years before. Blitzer wrote a lot about the moving trip, sharing his thoughts on the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau as he remembered family members who had been killed there during the Holocaust. The RIAS Berlin Commission in Germany gave Blitzer the prestigious Grand Prize Award for his work on “Never Again: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, A Tour with Wolf Blitzer” for CNN in 2022.
The powerful and deeply personal report took viewers outside the museum walls by talking to a famous historian, a Holocaust survivor, and a young museum worker about how people remember and forget the Holocaust in modern-day America. People watched as Blitzer walked around the museum and thought about the history of the Holocaust, his family’s role in that history, and how, as the child of survivors, he should carry on their work of teaching about the Holocaust.
Blitzer’s first job was with the Reuters News Agency in Tel Aviv in 1972. Soon after, he started working as a Washington, D.C., reporter for The Jerusalem Post. For more than 15 years, he sent stories from the nation’s capital. Blitzer has worked for CNN for more than 30 years. He started there in 1990 as the network’s Pentagon military affairs reporter. After that, he was CNN’s senior White House reporter for more than ten years, covering President Bill Clinton from the election in 1992 until 1999, when he became the host of CNN’s Sunday public affairs show Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.
Over the years, Blitzer has covered many big news events around the world that have changed the way politics are done around the world. In 1982, Blitzer was in Beirut when the PLO and Syrian troops left the area. In 1979, he went to Egypt and Israel with President Jimmy Carter for the final round of talks that led to the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. He was one of the first Western reporters to be allowed into KGB offices to get a rare look inside the Soviet intelligence service. In December 1991, he went back to Moscow to cover the fall of the Soviet Union and the change of power from Mikhail Gorbachev to Boris Yeltsin.
Blitzer has talked to many famous people throughout his work, such as U.S. Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. In addition, Blitzer has talked to a lot of world leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, Asif Ali Zardari, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, former South African President Nelson Mandela, and others.
Blitzer won the American News Women’s Club Excellence in Journalism Award in 2019. This is one of many awards he has won for his work. The Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism was given to him by the National Press Foundation in March 2014. He was the eighth person to receive the Urbino Press Award from the Italian Embassy in 2013 for his outstanding work as a journalist. The Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award from The Radio & Television Digital News Foundation and The Panetta Institute for Public Policy’s Jefferson-Lincoln Award were given to Blitzer in 2011.
Blitzer was on the CNN team that won an Emmy in 2012 for their coverage of the change in Egypt, which led to Hosni Mubarak’s resignation and afterward. He was also very important to the network’s efforts to win the 2006 Emmy for its live coverage of Election Day. He has also won the Judge Pillar of Justice Award from the Respect for Law Alliance in 2004 and the Daniel Pearl Award from the Chicago Press Veterans Association in 2003. A George Foster Peabody Award was given to his team for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina. They also won an Alfred I. DuPont Award for their coverage of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia and an Edward R. Murrow Award for CNN’s coverage of the 9/11 terrorist strikes.
In addition, Blitzer won an Emmy Award from The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1996. He also won a Golden CableACE from the National Academy of Cable Programming for his work with CNN during the Persian Gulf War. Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter’s Notebook (Oxford University Press, 1985) and Territory of Lies (Harper and Row, 1989) are the two books that Blitzer has written. The New York Times Book Review named Territory of Lies as one of the most important books of 1989.
The State University of New York at Buffalo gave Blitzer a Bachelor of Arts in history. The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., gave her a Master of Arts in international relations. Blitzer also has many honorary degrees from schools across the country, such as from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.; The State University of New York at Buffalo; The Catholic University in Washington, D.C.; Howard University in Washington, D.C.; The Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA; The University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH; Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA; St.
At CNN, Scholes works alongside; Fareed Zakaria, Fredricka Whitfield, Bill Weir, Amara Walker, John Avlon, Dana Bash, David Axelrod, John Berman, Victor Blackwell, Kate Bolduan, Pamela Brown, Kim Brunhuber, Erin Burnett, Alisyn Camerota, Julia Chatterley, Rosemary Church, Laura Coates, Anderson Cooper, Audie Cornish, Amanda Davies, Max Foster, Bianna Golodryga, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Laila Harrak, Erica Hill, Michael Holmes, Van Jones, Brianna Keilar, Lynda Kinkade, John King, Melissa Knowles, Christina Macfarlane, John Miller, Veronica Miracle, Bianca Nobilo, Abby Phillip, Brad Parks, Richard Quest, Don Riddell, Michael Smerconish, Boris Sanchez, Tom Sater.
Wolf Blitzer Salary
Blitzer earns a salary of about $50,000-$150,000.
Wolf Blitzer Net Worth
Blitzer has an estimated net worth of about $10 Million – $30 Million which he has earned through his career as a news anchor.
Wolf Blitzer Age
Blitzer was born on March 22, 1948, in Augsburg, Germany. He is 76 years old as of 2024, and he celebrates his birthday on the 22nd of March every year.
Wolf Blitzer Height and Weight
Blitzer stands at a height of 5 feet 10 inches tall (1.77m) and weighs 76 kgs (167 lbs).
Wolf Blitzer Family
Blitzer was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany near Munich to Cesia Blitzer (mother) and David Blitzer (father).and both parents were Polish Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland. His mother was a housewife while his father was a home builder. Blitzer’s paternal grandparents, two aunties, and two uncles were killed in Auschwitz in the Nazi concentration camps. On the other hand, In Poland, his maternal grandparents were picked up and sent to a work camp to make weapons for the German war effort. They later got typhoid fever and passed on. The 1948 Displaced Persons Act made it possible for Blitzer and his family to immigrate to the United States.
Wolf Blitzer Wife and Children
Blitzer has been married to Lynn Greenfield since 1973 and the couple were blessed with one child, a daughter named Ilana Blitzer Gendelman who was born in 1981 and is a television news anchor of Bethesda, M.d. The family currently resides in Bethesda, Maryland, and Greenfield. Ilana was previously married to Joseph Orrin Gendelman who is the son of Bruce Gendelman and Lori from Palm Beach, Florida. Later on, she separated from Joseph and married David Snider in 2015 in a private wedding ceremony. The couple is blessed with a son named Ruben Daniel (2016).
Wolf Blitzer Health
Blitzer is in good health as of now. No details prove that he has any health problems. However, this information will be updated when available.
Wolf Blitzer Social Media Platform
Blitzer is very active on his Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages. He has 1.7M followers on Twitter 277k followers on Instagram, and 154k followers on Facebook.