Miles O'Brien (journalist)

Early life

Born in Detroit and raised in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, O’Brien attended Georgetown University. In 1982, he was offered and accepted his first broadcasting position with WRC-TV in Washington, DC. He was later a reporter and anchor at TV stations in Boston, Massachusetts; Tampa, Florida; Albany, New York; and St. Joseph, Missouri. O’Brien joined CNN in 1992.

He is a third-generation general aviation pilot. His father, a private pilot, shared his love of flying with him at an early age. His first flights were in small Cessnas and Pipers rented by his father. O'Brien's paternal and maternal grandfathers were also both pilots.

CNN correspondent and anchor

While with CNN in Atlanta and New York, O’Brien served as CNN’s science, space, aviation technology, and environment correspondent. He anchored programs including Science and Technology Week, Headline News, Primetime, Live From…(CNN), and CNN American Morning.

O’Brien covered all aspects of the United States space program for CNN including reports on the Hubble Space Telescope, the shuttle dockings at Mir, the first space station launch from Kazakhstan, John Glenn’s return to space (with broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite), landings on Mars, the winning of the Ansari X-Prize, and the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia and its crew, a story he told to the world in a 16-hour marathon of live coverage. After years of negotiations, NASA had signed an agreement with CNN that, if not for the disaster, would have made O’Brien the first journalist to fly on a space shuttle. O’Brien followed the investigation and successful return to flight.

In 2000, O’Brien produced, shot and wrote a one-hour documentary on the process of readying a space shuttle for flight: "Terminal Count: What it Takes to Make the Space Shuttle Fly," which aired in May 2001.

A private pilot since 1988, O’Brien also reported extensively on civil aviation issues and crash investigations. O'Brien reported the airliner crashes of US Airways Flight 427, ValuJet 592, TWA 800, EgyptAir 990, American Airlines 587, Comair 5191, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Payne Stewart, Paul Wellstone, the C-150 incursion into the Washington DC Air Defense Identification Zone, and the Cory Lidle crash in Manhattan. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, O'Brien provided viewers radar tracks of the hijacked flights while the twin towers were still standing. During the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, he, along with various retired generals, reported on military aviation techniques and strategy.

His coverage of non-aerospace topics included anchoring The Situation Room, covering the terrorist attack in Mumbai on the Oberoi Trident and Taj Mahal hotels, as well as several other locations. He also covered Hurricane Katrina for several weeks, anchoring CNN's Peabody and Dupont Award-winning coverage.

O’Brien left CNN in December 2008. He was rehired by CNN as an aviation analyst in March, 2014.

Independent correspondent/journalist

After leaving CNN, O’Brien formed Miles O’Brien Productions, LLC in Washington, DC. Through this independent company, O’Brien creates stories for numerous outlets including PBS, Discovery Science (TV channel), National Science Foundation, Spaceflightnow.com, and corporate clients. One of his most notable series productions for PBS was "Blueprint America" that dealt with rebuilding American mass transit infrastructure.

O’Brien joined "True/Slant" as a blogger in 2009. He co-founded the Spaceflight Now podcast, "This Week in Space" in 2009, and hosted shows until the shuttles’ retirement in 2011.

Starting in 2009, O’Brien joined the National Science Foundation as a correspondent for the “Science Nation” series, and joined the PBS Frontline produced by WGBH-TV Boston, as a writer and correspondent.

He worked on the Frontline documentary, "Flying Cheap" which aired on the one-year anniversary of the Colgan Air plane crash in Buffalo, NY. The highly acclaimed documentary featured former Colgan Air pilots revealing shocking details about some attempts to keep underpaid pilots flying beyond legal limits.

In 2010, O'Brien became a PBS NewsHour science correspondent.

In 2013, O’Brien produced and directed “Mind of a Rampage Killer” and “Manhunt: Boston Bombers” and “Megastorm Aftermath” for PBS' Nova. In 2014, he produced and narrated "Why Planes Vanish?" for NOVA, adapted from "Where is Flight MH370" from the BBC science program Horizon. He also narrated a recent view after the Fukushima disaster on a new episode of Nova.

Career timeline

Personal life

O'Brien resides in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He has a son, Miles, and a daughter, Connery.

An instrument-rated pilot with about 2,000 hours pilot-in-command time, O'Brien owns a Cirrus SR22, which he often flies on assignments. His other interests include running, mountain and road biking, swimming, waterskiing, scuba diving, sailing, and carpentry.

In February, 2014, O'Brien was injured when a Pelican case filled with television equipment fell on his left forearm, causing acute compartment syndrome and resulting in the amputation of his left arm above the elbow.

Affiliations

O'Brien is on the boards of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, LessCancer.org, and the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation.

From 2009 to 2011, O'Brien served as chairman of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC)'s Education and Outreach Committee and advised the NASA Administrator on mass communication strategies. He rejoined the NAC in April 2014 to advise NASA's senior leadership on challenges and solutions facing the agency as it unfolds a new era of exploration.

He is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (since 1988), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (since 1982), the Experimental Aircraft Association (since 2007), and the Writers’ Guild of America (since 2011).

In 2014, O'Brien joined the Board of the Amputee Coalition.

Awards