Who Are The Moderators Of The December Democratic Debate Judy Woodruff Amna Nawaz Yamiche Alcindor And Tim Alberta To Question Candidates

The debate—which will be broadcast on local PBS stations and on CNN—will be hosted by Politico chief political correspondent Tim Alberta and PBS NewsHour journalists Yamiche Alcindor, Amna Nawaz and Judy Woodruff.

Tim Alberta has covered the gamut of political issues in contemporary America, from the country’s changing demographics to infighting on Capitol Hill. Alberta earned his degree in political science and journalism from Michigan State University in 2008. Afterward, he secured an internship at the Wall Street Journal and later wrote for the National Review before joining Politico.

His book, American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, was published by HarperCollins in July and became a New York Times bestseller. The work tells “the story of a president’s rise based on a country’s evolution and a party’s collapse,” according to the synopsis.

However, as NBC News reported, some members of the Democratic National Committee have called into question Alberta’s qualification to participate in the debate, citing the fact that Alberta has mostly reported on the Republican Party and that the Wall Street Journal and National Review are right-leaning publications. POLITICO has maintained that he is nonpartisan, and he is still scheduled to moderate the debate.

Yamiche Alcindor has been PBS NewsHour’s White House correspondent since January 2018. She is also a contributor to NBC News and MSNBC, according to a joint press release from POLITICO and PBS. Prior to joining PBS, Alcindor worked as a reporter for The New York Times and USA Today. The daughter of Haitian immigrants, she was raised in Miami and completed her education at Georgetown University and New York University.

Her reporting on politics and social justice has taken her across the nation. As a political journalist, she covered the 2016 campaigns of both President Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders. She also reported on such seminal events of the decade as the murder of Trayvon Martin, the Sandy Hook shooting and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

Alcindor won the Emerging Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Black Journalists in 2013.

Amna Nawaz serves as senior national correspondent for PBS NewsHour, where she began working in April 2018. Before PBS, she held positions on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, Dateline NBC, and MSNBC. Like her fellow moderators, she has reported on a wide range of issues, including the Trump administration’s immigration policies, climate change in Brazil and gentrification in America’s urban centers.

Born in Virginia, Nawaz is of Pakistani descent. India Abroad, a newspaper for the South Asian diaspora published in New York, reported that Nawaz is the first person of South Asian ancestry to moderate a presidential debate. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and her master’s degree at the London School of Economics.

Nawaz received a Peabody Award for the 2018 series “The Plastic Problem,” about the impact of the world’s seemingly inexhaustible craving for single-use plastics. According to the press release, she has also reported the documentary, Roberts County: A Year in the Most Pro-Trump Town.

Judy Woodruff is PBS NewsHour’s anchor and managing editor. An alumna of Duke University, she has over 40 years of broadcast journalism experience covering politics and other news at CNN, NBC and PBS.

Her career has been prolific. Woodruff worked for NBC News as its White House correspondent for five years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She hosted the PBS documentary series, Frontline with Judy Woodruff, from 1984 to 1990. She later worked at CNN, where she anchored Inside Politics.

According to PBS, Woodruff has won no fewer than nine major journalism awards as well as honorary degrees from 25 universities. She also served as a visiting fellow at Harvard University in 2005 and as a visiting professor at her alma mater in 2006.

The moderators will be responsible for wrangling seven candidates scheduled to appear at the debate Thursday night. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer are all set to take the stage.