David Muir Of ABC News' Complete Transformation

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The network news anchor has long played a key role in Americans' television viewing habits. Since the days when a survey found "CBS Evening News" anchor Walter Cronkite to be "the most trusted man in America," there's been a tradition of discovering what's going on in the world around us by gathering in front of a television set to watch the evening news. 

While that tradition has waned in recent years as new technology has taken hold and network television viewership continually erodes, that nightly newscast has remained a staple. Over on ABC's "World News Tonight," anchor David Muir has become the latest in a long line of anchors that have included such TV news icons as Harry Reasoner, trailblazing journalist Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings, and Diane Sawyer. Since taking over the anchor chair in 2014, Muir has reported from war zones, interviewed presidents and religious leaders (including Pope Francis), and earned the trust of viewers who choose to grant him an hour of their time each weeknight to inform them on what's going on in the world. "I feel, in this job, I've had the privilege and responsibility to witness so much history firsthand. All of it fuels me," Muir once told USA Today. "I'm grateful to have seen everything I've seen, whether it's the difficult moments or the uplifting moments."

His journey has taken him from a news-obsessed kid in a Syracuse suburb to the heights of network television, and that voyage is far from over. To discover more, keep reading to experience David Muir of ABC News' staggering transformation.

For those who knew David Muir when he was just a young child, his eventual rise to the top of television news is hardly surprising. As his childhood friend Heather Rich Puchta told Syracuse.com in 2014, Muir aspired to a career in broadcast journalism from an early age. "He always knew," she said, recalling that he'd don a trench coat on Halloween, costuming himself as a reporter. "He'd say, 'I'm going to be the next Dan Rather.' He knew," Puchta added.

"I was a total nerd," Muir said of his childhood self during a 2024 appearance on "Live with Kelly and Mark," recalling how he and his friends would be outside playing. "And I'd be out there too, but then I'd be like, 'I gotta go inside, it's time for the news!' So I'd go in and watch the news."

Even at that age, Muir was not one to wait for fate to intervene on his behalf, instead taking steps to further his dreams. That was evident when the sixth grader wrote a letter to Ron Curtis, anchor of a local evening news broadcast in his hometown of Syracuse, New York, inquiring how he should go about getting his foot in the door to pursue a career in journalism. Curtis responded. "I'll never forget," Muir told Syracuse.com. "He wrote, 'Competition in television news is keen. There's always room for the right person. It could be you.'" 

The response that aspiring young journalist David Muir received from Syracuse news anchor Ron Curtis emboldened the youngster. He decided to turn up at the headquarters of Curtis' station, WTVH and presented himself as a volunteer. "I was always willing to do anything: carry the tripod, rip the scripts, log the interviews," Muir told The New York Times of his experience as an intern. "I fetched Cokes from the Coke machine for the anchor. It all thrilled me." 

Muir kept returning throughout his teens, year after year, to the point that station staffers charted his changing height. "They had a growth chart on the newsroom wall where each summer and school break I came in, they'd mark me up on the wall and measure how much I'd grown and they would often joke about how many octaves my voice had dropped," Muir said in a 2016 interview with Syracuse.com.

Looking back, Muir remained appreciative of the sacrifices his parents made so that he could volunteer at Channel 5. "One of the images I won't forget is my mother and my father driving me there on summer vacation or school breaks," Muir told Syracuse.com in 2014. "When most kids go off to do other things, I remember just begging them to take me to that TV station. I'm sure they dreaded it. Between the two of them, they had to get me there."

While attending Ithaca College, David Muir encountered an opportunity to study at the University of Salamanca in Spain. Muir, who'd always wanted to travel the world as a professional journalist, going to Spain ticked all the boxes. "At the time, studying abroad was a chance to take a break from my academic discipline and flex a different kind of muscle learning a language and exploring a tiny corner of the world I had never imagined I would temporarily call home," he explained in an interview with IES Abroad. "For a budding reporter, it was a sort of practice run for assignments that would one day take me all over the world."

As he recalled, having dinner each night with the Spanish family that was hosting him proved to be something of a crash course for his eventual career, in that he'd be asked questions about what his life was like in the U.S. "I would in turn ask them about their own lives and looking back, that nightly exercise is not unlike what I do every day as a journalist," he said. 

"That was so pivotal," Muir told The New York Times of the time that he spent studying in Spain. "This was living with a family, attending school in Spanish," he said, explaining how what he'd learned during that period had continued to resonate with him later in life. "That experience all those years ago came back to help me in ways I never could have imagined," he said.

After graduation, David Muir returned to his hometown of Syracuse, New York. All that volunteering he did for WTVH as a teenager came into play when it led to a job as a reporter at the station. Working his way up, Muir eventually moved behind the anchor desk at the No. 84 market in the U.S. After five years in Syracuse, he moved to a bigger market, becoming a reporter at WCVB in Boston. 

"I felt like the luckiest kid in the world when I landed that job," Muir told Variety of landing the job in Boston, America's No. 7 market. Recalling the experience, Muir came to see his time in Boston as being akin to graduate studies in broadcast journalism. "At that time, Boston was one of the greatest markets to cover," Muir said. "Viewers wanted information on politics, but also the Red Sox and the Patriots. Snowstorms were outsized, too. It was a great training ground."

Decades later, looking back on his early days in TV news when interviewed by Syracuse.com, Muir admitted that he felt grateful for all the varied experiences that had shaped him. "I still feel like, you know, that kid from Upstate New York that felt like the luckiest kid in the world that was invited to intern," he mused. "I still feel that way every single night when I walk up to the studio."

Having established himself as a broadcast journalist in Syracuse and then Boston, David Muir entered the big leagues when he was hired by ABC News in 2003. Initially, Muir anchored "World News Now," ABC's overnight newscast. In addition to reporting on current events for night owls and insomniacs, he also became a lead correspondent for ABC News, which sent him traveling throughout the world to cover all manner of breaking news. 

During his early years at ABC News, Muir was eventually tapped to anchor the weekend edition of "World News Tonight," the network's flagship news broadcast. "It's something," Muir told Syracuse.com of anchoring the weekend version of the newscast anchored, at the time, by veteran journalist Diane Sawyer, whose success in broadcast news made her a wealthy woman. "These are big shoes to fill, sitting in this chair on the weekend," he added. "I often say that my job is to keep Diane's chair warm two days a week. And it's an honor to do that."

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In the years after he joined ABC News, David Muir's star continued to rise. Having been dubbed "the Brad Pitt of news anchors" by TMZ in 2009, he was subsequently promoted to lead correspondent covering the 2012 presidential election. Muir's profile was raised significantly after his interview with the Republican presidential candidate, veteran politician Mitt Romney, after his relentless questioning about Romney's tax returns.

There were other high-profile opportunities that placed him in close proximity to journalists he'd grown up worshipping. "It was a couple of months ago I was in London, one of the anchors for the royal wedding, and to sit in the anchor booth with Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters was, for me, as exciting as reporting on the wedding unfolding behind me at Buckingham Palace," he admitted in an interview with Syracuse.com.

This rise through the ranks did not come without a lot of work and sacrifice, to the point that Muir essentially had no time for a social life. "I often work seven days a week," he said but insisted it was simply because the news took priority over everything else. "I'm not looking for a pat on the back because I love what I do," he explained.

As a correspondent for ABC News, David Muir was dispatched to some high-risk parts of the world. That was certainly the case in 2013, when he reported from Iran, taking to the streets of Tehran to find out how U.S. sanctions had been impacting the country.

Meanwhile, Muir continued to anchor the weekend editions of "World News Tonight," leading to significant ratings growth as he brought viewers dispatches from various parts of the globe. These hotspots included Cairo (where he covered the Tahrir Square revolution), post-tsunami Japan, and Mogadishu, where he was the first American news anchor to report on the famine in Somalia. During that latter trip, he and his crew were fired upon while reporting on efforts to deliver aid to starving refugees.

"The numbers of refugees are swelling to the point where there's no room for them in the camps that exist," Muir told HuffPost of the grim humanitarian crisis that he encountered. "I think it's heartbreaking."

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In 2014, David Muir finally achieved the goal that he'd set out for himself as a child when he was named anchor of "World News Tonight." He took over for anchor Diane Sawyer, who would lose her husband, acclaimed film director Mike Nichols, later that same year. Muir had already distinguished himself as host of ABC News' "20/20." "On this incredibly humbling day, I think of the 12-year-old boy with a dream of being a reporter and seeing the world," he said in a statement to The Washington Post about the culmination of that long-held dream of becoming a network news anchor.

According to ABC News chief James Goldston, hiring Muir for the network's flagship news broadcast was a no-brainer. "He was a natural choice," Goldston told USA Today. "He's been preparing for this a long time. It wasn't a difficult decision."

For ABC, having Muir behind the anchor desk proved to be a ratings bonanza. Less than a year after Muir took over from Sawyer, viewership of "World News Tonight" soared, becoming America's most-watched news broadcast. However, Muir was under no illusions that the three-way race between ABC, NBC, and CBS wasn't going to be hard-fought. "I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that I feel personally some of that pressure," Muir admitted. Meanwhile, Goldston confirmed he was confident that Muir was going to be sitting in that anchor chair for some time to come. "He's there for the long haul," he said.

As anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight," David Muir demonstrated his ability to generate headlines beyond ABC News during the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. During that contentious campaign, Muir interviewed candidate Hillary Clinton, yielding a fascinating revelation.

During his interview with Clinton, he confronted her about her use of a private email while serving as Secretary of State during the Obama administration. During his questioning, she offered what was, at that point, the closest she'd ever come to an apology. "That was a mistake," she said via ABC News. "I'm sorry about that. I take responsibility," she added, in what came to be among the many media moments Hillary Clinton can never erase.

After Donald Trump won the election, Muir landed the first interview with the new president since his inauguration. That interview was also particularly newsworthy due to some statements Trump made, including his support of waterboarding and other forms of torture and his backtracking on his frequent contention that Mexico would for his much-hyped border wall. Then, of course, there was Trump's insistence that the crowd attending his inauguration was the biggest in American history (it certainly wasn't). "That was some crowd," Trump told Muir. "When I looked at the numbers that happened to come in from all of the various sources, we had the biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches."

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Ratings for ABC's "World News Tonight" had risen since David Muir took over as anchor, but that reached a whole other level in 2020. As The New York Times reported, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a resurgence in Americans tuning in to nightly network news broadcasts. 

According to the Times, the ratings for "World News Tonight" were neck and neck with those of "NBC Nightly News," anchored by veteran journalist Lester Holt. Viewership for each newscast had soared to about 12 million — nearly the same number that tuned in each week for "Monday Night Football." In fact, ratings for "World News Tonight" were the highest they'd been in two decades; the last time the newscast captured that many eyeballs had been back in 2000. 

As Muir told Deadline at the time, he understood that a boost in viewership came with increased responsibility, and it was not something that he took lightly. "It is very rare in our lifetimes that we see moments like this one, where you have this sort of intersection of an urgent public health threat where lives are at stake," he explained, citing a looming collapse of the U.S. economy and a crisis of leadership in the White House. "And it's not surprising to me in any way that there is this high anxiety across this country. We're feeling it too. And I do really believe that we have some small role to play in trying to bring that anxiety level down every night."

Ever since entering politics, real estate tycoon-turned-POTUS Donald Trump has frequently encountered ABC's David Muir. During the 2024 election, Muir and fellow ABC News journalist Linsey Davis served as moderators of the presidential debate between Trump and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. 

During the debate, Trump's ire was raised when Muir and Davis continually fact-checked his false statements. That was most notable when Muir shot down Trump's debunked claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, had been eating suburban house pets. "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs," Trump said, as reported by CNN. "The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country and it's a shame." Muir, however, jumped in to inform Trump that ABC News had spoken with Springfield's city manager, who confirmed that no pets were being eaten. "He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community," Muir said. 

During a subsequent speech, Trump was clearly still steaming over being corrected on live television. Referring to the ABC News anchor as "this foolish man, this foolish fool," Trump fired one more shot at Muir: "A guy who has good hair but not as good as it was five years ago."

Over the course of his career with ABC News, David Muir has offered little insight into his private life. As a result, there's been wide speculation about his dating history and his sexual orientation (as Yahoo! Entertainment pointed out, he's been romantically linked to both men and women, although Muir himself has never actually acknowledged dating anyone). 

One thing the intensely private Muir has been open about, however, has been his relationship with his dog, Axel. He first introduced Axel when his pet was a puppy in a 2019 Instagram post. He shared more about his pup during a 2021 appearance on "Rachael Ray," when he discussed the German short-haired pointer. "He just turned two," Muir said of Axel.

Since then, Axel has made frequent and continual appearances on Muir's social media, including a December 2024 Instagram post in which he's giving the dog a kiss on the head. "You get one kiss a day from Axel," Muir wrote in the caption.