Long before becoming executive producer of Good Morning America, Simone Swink was an intern at ABC’s This Week. On Sundays, she would deliver newspapers to George Stephanopoulos, who had recently left the White House and was a contributor to the show.
“He was always very polite, very courteous and he knew every single person’s name in our office, from the interns to the researchers,” Swink recalled.
He gave everyone Barnes & Noble gift cards, too. “He was a big reader and he gave others the gift of reading,” she added.
Twelve years later, Swink rejoined ABC News as a writer on GMA and was introduced to Stephanopoulos on the set.
“He said, didn’t we used to work together?” she recalled. “And I didn’t say anything. You could have knocked me over, I was so surprised.”
Stephanopoulos had expected to follow his father and grandfather into the priesthood. He was a sportscaster at the Columbia University radio station and, while a Rhodes Scholar, did some reporting for the Christian Science Monitor and CBS.
After he came back from Oxford University, he applied for a job at ABC’s Nightline but didn’t get it. He’d caught the political bug, went to work in Washington and wound up as a senior adviser in President Bill Clinton’s White House.
I had to show it in my work and prove I could be a fair and objective journalist. That’s what I’ve tried to do.”
George Stephanopoulos
Former ABC News president David Westin read Stephanopoulos’ book All Too Human: A Political Education. Westin was impressed and asked him to lunch at ABC.
“If you decided you wanted to go into news full-time, I think you can have a really great career here,” Westin recalled telling Stephanopoulos. “And he, to my surprise, actually said, ‘David, that’s exactly what I was thinking about doing.’ ”
Westin warned Stephanopoulos that he’d have to go back to square one and learn the craft of broadcast journalism. “And he said, ‘No, I’m up for that.’And that’s just exactly what he did,” Westin said. “He has a discipline to him that is truly remarkable.”
There were many who thought that a political operative didn’t belong at ABC News. “Peter Jennings called me and said: ‘This was a mistake. You shouldn’t do this. This man is not a journalist,’ ” Westin said.
Stephanopoulos wound up working with Jennings on stories for World News Tonight. “And to Peter’s great credit he called me back a few months later and said: ‘David you were right. I was wrong,’ ” Westin said. “ ‘He’s one of the best reporters we’ve got. He’ll go out and get sources and report back in the evening and he’s better than a lot of our career reporters here.’ ”
Stephanopoulos said he knew he had to prove himself at ABC News. “I had conversations with Ted Koppel and Charlie Gibson and Peter Jennings,” he said. “But I also knew that conversations alone wouldn’t assuage all the concerns. I had to show it in my work and prove I could be a fair and objective journalist. That’s what I’ve tried to do.”
Stephanopoulos was hosting This Week when Westin asked him to host GMA. He turned it down three times.
“I had a young family in D.C., and I’d been steeped in politics and political news and doing the Sunday show,” Stephanopoulos recalled. “I didn’t think it was necessarily a natural fit. But David had confidence in me and he was right and I was wrong. I just love the fact that every morning you’ve got an entire audience who are waiting to start their day with you. It’s a great privilege.”
In the Center of It All
Over the years he’s covered giant stories, from 9/11 to the Capitol attack on January 6. “The interview I did with President [Joe] Biden [July 5, following his debate with former President Donald Trump] was probably the highest-stakes interview of my career,” he said. After that interview, Biden decided not to seek reelection.
Stephanopoulos has had less than serious moments, too. He trained for a race up the Empire State Building against Olympian Apolo Ohno. “I was proud that I did as well against Apolo as I did — he gave me a good head start,” he said. But he resists — sometimes successfully, sometimes not — the annual push to wear a costume for the Halloween show.
Stephanopoulos may be more likely to show off his sense of humor at home, with his wife, comedian Ali Wentworth, and their two daughters. Elliott Anastasia Stephanopoulos has been a production assistant at GMA, but Dad isn’t pushing the girls into a job on TV.
“I just want them to follow their dreams,” Stephanopoulos said.
