Geoff Bennett lands at PBS following exit from NBC

“PBS NewsHour” has named Geoff Bennett its new chief Washington correspondent, it announced Thursday.

Late last month, Bennett announced he would leave NBC News, where he most recently served as a fill-in anchor of the 2 p.m. hour and White House corespondent.

Now with the public broadcaster, Bennett will serve as the anchor of “PBS NewsHour Weekend” beginning in April when production of the program moves to WETA from WNET/New York, the newsroom said. 

“We are consolidating production of PBS’s nightly news flagship program under WETA and continue to bring new talent to the stellar PBS NewsHour team, building on the strong work of anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff, executive producer Sara Just and entire NewsHour team,” Sharon Percy Rockefeller, president and CEO of WETA and president of NewsHour Productions, said in a statement. 

Woodruff said she is “so pleased to see Geoff join the NewsHour family of journalists, after his impressive career covering politics, Washington and New York. He will add yet another layer of seasoning to this team I’m so proud to work with every day.” 

Bennett previously worked for NPR and ABC News before joining NBC. 

He earned headlines over the summer after fighting back tears on air while reading the last words of Elijah McClain, whose 2019 death in Aurora, Colo., police custody garnered national attention after the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans.