With more than two decades of experience reporting from Washington, Steven Portnoy is one of America’s preeminent audio storytellers. From every major dateline in DC, he has brought listeners to presidential inaugurals, congressional debates, State of the Union addresses and Supreme Court oral arguments. A past president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Portnoy spent seven years covering the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations from the second row of the White House briefing room.
Portnoy returned to ABC News — where he began his career – in 2023 after more than eight years at CBS News, where he served as a congressional correspondent before reporting from the White House.
At CBS, Portnoy was part of the team that broke the news of the prisoner swap that resulted in Brittney Griner’s safe return. He also covered the criminal trials involving former President Trump. In the spring of 2023, Portnoy reported extensively on the murder of a legendary broadcaster for the three-hour network CBS radio documentary, “Who Killed George Polk?”
Portnoy has vast experience covering national politics, having reported for ABC through the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections and for CBS in 2016 and 2020. His reporting has won both networks Edward R. Murrow awards for breaking news, continuing coverage and overall excellence.
Portnoy is an accomplished live broadcaster. He was on the air for more than eight hours on January 6th, anchoring CBS News Radio’s award-winning live coverage of the insurrection at the US Capitol. He served as CBS News Radio’s election night anchor in 2020. He anchored ABC Radio’s coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Steven Portnoy first joined ABC in 2002, as an intern for the White House unit of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. A year later, he joined ABC-owned station WMAL-AM in Washington, where he reported on local news. In 2006, Portnoy joined ABC News as a correspondent.
In 2008, Portnoy was named a Peter Jennings Fellow by the National Constitution Center. He was honored with the Bayliss Horizon Award by the John Bayliss Broadcast Foundation in 2005, and took first place in the radio competition at the Hearst Broadcast News Championships in 2001.
While he was a student at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Portnoy produced television newscasts at WIXT-TV (now WSYR-TV) and WSTM-TV and reported for WSYR-AM.
He lives in Washington with his husband, Ryan.