Errol Barnett is CBS News’ transportation correspondent based in New York and Washington, D.C., reporting for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms including “CBS This Morning,” the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell,” and CBSN, CBS News’ 24/7 digital streaming news service.
Barnett has also served as a fill-in anchor on the “CBS Weekend News,” “CBS This Morning: Saturday” and on CBSN.
At CBS News, Barnett’s intrepid reporting has covered a wide variety of national and international events. In the thick of the 2020 presidential campaign, his interview with then-candidate Joe Biden was widely cited for the news it uncovered and at the end of 2020 he was the first to report extra doses of the Pfizer COVID vaccine were being discovered in vials by hospital staff across the country. Barnett was the only network journalist to fly through Hurricane Dorian when it stalled over the Bahamas as the most powerful storm to ever hit the country and reported extensively from Grand Bahama island documenting its aftermath. He has secured several exclusive interviews, including with the creator of the controversial facial recognition app Clearview AI, with the mother of a 9-year-old Illinois boy charged with murdering five relatives and with an Arizona woman attacked by a jaguar at a Phoenix Zoo.
Barnett joined CBS News in 2016 as a Washington-based correspondent, covering the White House beat on weekends. He was with President Barack Obama during his final overseas trip in office and questioned President Donald Trump several times at the White House and aboard Air Force One about threats against journalists and other major issues.
Before joining CBS News, Barnett spent almost a decade at CNN with his most recent role as anchor of weekday editions of “CNN Newsroom” airing on CNN and CNN International. Prior to anchoring from CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, the network deployed Barnett as a general assignment correspondent to Johannesburg, South Africa and to Abu Dhabi, U.A.E as a midday anchor. While anchoring from the Middle East, Barnett was part of CNN’s 2011 Peabody Award winning coverage of the “Arab Spring.”
He also hosted CNNI’s weekly series “Inside Africa” for which he reported from 22 countries on the continent in 24 months including Madagascar, Senegal and Tunisia. His work earned the program a Salute to Excellence award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
His journalism career began in 2001 at Channel One News, where, at age 18, he was the Los Angeles-based network’s youngest anchor and reporter. Barnett covered the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, then-Senator Barack Obama’s first national speech, and the New England heroin epidemic.
Barnett earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science with a focus on international relations from the University of California, Los Angeles. A native of England, Barnett is a member of the Investigative Reporters and Editors, SAG/AFTRA, the Society of Professional Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists. He lives with his wife and dog.
