Wolf Blitzer

Wolf Isaac Blitzer was born March 22, 1948, in Augsburg, Bavaria, to Cesia and David Blitzer, Polish Jews who had survived Nazi concentration camps; his paternal grandparents, two uncles, and two aunts were murdered at Auschwitz, and his maternal grandparents died of typhoid in a labor camp. The family reached the United States and settled in Kenmore, New York, outside Buffalo, where Blitzer graduated high school in 1966. He studied history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, then international relations at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. He started at Reuters' Tel Aviv bureau in the early 1970s, then spent seventeen years, from 1973 to 1990, as the Jerusalem Post's Washington correspondent, covering Sadat's 1977 visit to Israel and the treaty that followed.

Blitzer joined CNN in May 1990 as a military affairs reporter and became a household name within months reporting the first Gulf War, including the network's live coverage of Baghdad under bombardment. He covered the White House from 1992 to 1999, won an Emmy for the Oklahoma City bombing coverage, then hosted Late Edition from 1998 and anchored CNN's presidential election nights beginning in 2004. The Situation Room, which he has anchored since August 2005, became his signature program, shortened to an hour in 2021 and, since March 2025, moved to a midday slot he co-hosts with Pamela Brown. He was reporting near the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April 2026 when a shooting broke out nearby, and went live on the incident after confirming he was unharmed.

Blitzer's early career sits awkwardly beside the studied neutrality of his later CNN persona. Before he was a wire reporter, he edited the Near East Report for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and while covering Israel for the Jerusalem Post he also published articles in Hebrew newspapers under the pen names Ze'ev Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak. His 1989 book on the Jonathan Pollard espionage case, Territory of Lies, made the New York Times's notable books list, but critic Robert I. Friedman called it a slick piece of damage control favoring Pollard and Israeli intelligence over the record against them. None of that disqualifies him, but it complicates the image of a blank-slate anchor: a son of Holocaust survivors whose entire early career ran through explicitly pro-Israel institutions before he ever sat behind a CNN desk.

Blitzer, at seventy-eight, is still on CNN air most days, which makes any verdict on his career premature by definition. He has anchored the network's coverage of nearly every major American news event for more than three decades, from the Gulf War to the 2026 Correspondents' Dinner shooting, accumulating honors including the Walter Cronkite Award in 2024 and a run of parody cameos in Hollywood films that suggest a kind of institutional-furniture status few working anchors reach. Whether that adds up to a defining body of journalism or simply the longest tenure in cable news history is a question his own continued presence on the air keeps open.

Wolf Blitzer's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter's Notebook book
  His account of U.S.-Israel relations 1985
• Territory of Lies book
  Account of the Jonathan Pollard espionage case 1989
• Gulf War coverage for CNN television
  Live reporting that made him a national name 1991
• Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer television
  CNN Sunday public-affairs program 1998
• The Situation Room television
  CNN's flagship afternoon news program, anchored since August 2005 2005

• March 22, 1948 aged 0 Born in Augsburg, Bavaria
• 1966 aged ~18 Graduates Kenmore West Senior High School, New York
• 1970 aged ~22 Earns a history degree from SUNY Buffalo
• 1972 aged ~24 Earns a master's in international relations from Johns Hopkins SAIS
• 1973 aged ~25 Becomes the Jerusalem Post's Washington correspondent
• November 1977 aged 29 Covers Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel
• May 1990 aged 42 Joins CNN as a military affairs reporter
• January 1991 aged 42 Gulf War coverage establishes him as a national figure
• August 2005 aged 57 Begins anchoring The Situation Room

• Ted Turner 1938–2026
  Media mogul who donated a billion dollars to the United Nations Foundation and championed environmental causes. hired by
• Christiane Amanpour b. 1958
  CNN chief international correspondent who has covered wars and crises from the Balkans to the Middle East. CNN colleague of
• Anderson Cooper b. 1967
  CNN anchor and correspondent known for his international reporting and coverage of major disasters and conflicts. CNN colleague of
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. honored in the name of
• Roger Ailes 1940–2017
  Television executive who created Fox News and transformed partisan cable news and conservative politics. rival network builder to