ABC News Correspondent Ann Compton to Speak at UT Tyler
October 15, 2003
Ann Compton will be the speaker at the Vernon and Amy Faulconer Lecture, which is a part of The University of Texas at Tyler 2003-04 Distinguished Lecture Series, Susan Thomae-Morphew, director of the university’s R. Don Cowan Fine and Performing Arts Center, announced.
Compton replaces retired Gen. Wesley Clark who withdrew from the series in an effort to avoid any problems with presidential campaign finance regulations.
The Vernon and Amy Faulconer Lecture featuring Compton will begin at 8 pm Thursday, Oct. 30 at the Cowan Center.
Lecture tickets are $11, and reception tickets are $51. Reception tickets include valet parking, the lecture and a reception with the speaker.
Compton also will be featured in a student seminar for university students at 4 p.m. that day in the Braithwaite Recital Hall of the Cowan Center.
Compton is now covering a sixth President for ABC News in a career that has taken her to the White House, Capitol Hill and through seven presidential campaigns.
On Sept. 11, 2001, she was the only broadcast reporter allowed to remain onboard Air Force One during the dramatic hours when President George W. Bush was unable to return to Washington.
Her reports during the crisis were cited as ABC News received the prestigious Silver Baton Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University award for its coverage. Compton was also on the team that received an Emmy and a Peabody award for ABC News' Sept. 11 reporting.
After the Watergate scandal came to an end, Compton became the first woman assigned to cover the White House by a television network, and she was one of the youngest to receive the assignment.
In 2000, Compton became chief Washington correspondent for ABCNews.com where she wrote and anchored a daily political column On Background. Currently she also holds the title of national correspondent for ABC Radio News, heard daily on hundreds of ABC Radio stations as she covers the White House.
She began her broadcasting career in Virginia where an internship at Hollins College (now University) led to a fulltime job reporting for WDBJ TV, a CBS affiliate in Roanoke. Compton established a State Capitol Bureau in Richmond for the station. In 1973, ABC News hired Compton and she reported from New York until December 1974 when she was assigned to the White House.
