Susan Jo Candiotti (born December 6, 1953) is an American
journalist currently working as a national
correspondent for
CNN.
Education
Candiotti attended
Loyola University Chicago
Loyola University Chicago (Loyola or LUC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1870 by the Society of Jesus, Loyola is one of the largest Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Cathol ...
, studying abroad at Loyola University Chicago's
John Felice Rome Center for a year before graduating with honors.
Career
Local news
She worked as an investigative
reporter
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
at local stations in
Miami, where her assignments included the
Iran-Contra affair. Candiotti has also worked for television stations in
Buffalo, N.Y.,
Binghamton, N.Y.
Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the confluenc ...
, and Altoona, Pennsylvania.
National news
Candiotti joined CNN in 1994 as a national correspondent out of the network's Miami base.
She has covered several prominent national stories, including the
9/11 attacks in New York City, the 1999-2000
Elian Gonzalez Elian or Elián (Spanish) or Élian (French) can refer to:
People
* Saint Elian (Syria) (died 284)
** Church of Saint Elian (Arabic: كنيسة مار اليان, Kaneesat Mar Elian) is a church in Homs, Syria
**Monastery of St. Elian a Syriac Cath ...
story, the 1999 James Byrd dragging-death trial in Jasper, Texas, the 1998 fatal Capitol shooting rampage in Washington, D.C., and the
Oklahoma City bombing and subsequent trials of convicted co-conspirators
Timothy McVeigh and
Terry Nichols. She also interviewed McVeigh from prison and covered his execution in 2001.
Candiotti also has covered breaking news stories in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean, Cuba, Mexico, Haiti and Peru. She covered the 1996 Tupac Amaru hostage situation at the Japanese Embassy in Peru. In Haiti, Candiotti spent months covering the crisis preceding and following Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return from exile. She was the first reporter to file live ship-to-shore reports from the U.S. Coast Guard cutters when thousands of Cuban refugees fled Cuba on homemade rafts in 1994. Additionally, in early 1998, she traveled with U.S. troops to Kuwait.
She also spent more than two months in Montana following the standoff between Freeman and the FBI in 1996. While in Montana, she also covered the extradition of accused Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski. In 1996, Candiotti covered the
Valujet Flight 592 crash in the Florida Everglades, the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash and the 2000 EgyptAir Flight 990 tragedy.
In 2008, she reported live during Hurricane Gustav (during one incident, she mentioned her cell phone number over a live satellite feed which was not on television at the time, but could be seen by viewers with a satellite dish).
On Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012, a vulgarity came from Candiotti during a live broadcast on the shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma, wherein she quoted a Facebook post made by a suspect in the case which used racial slurs. Candiotti first warned viewers of offensive language before quoting "shot by a fucking nigger". This incident gathered mix reactions from viewers.
On December 14, 2012, at approximately 2:15 p.m., Candiotti stood outside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and reported that the shooter in the
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting had been identified to her by a source as Ryan Lanza. She did not confirm or verify this information before the live broadcast. The name of the actual shooter was later revealed to be Adam Lanza, the younger brother of Ryan Lanza.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Candiotti, Susan
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
John Felice Rome Center alumni
American political journalists
1953 births
American women television journalists
Loyola University Chicago alumni
CNN people
21st-century American women