Steve Osunsami
Steve Osunsami is an award-winning senior national correspondent for ABC News based in Atlanta, Georgia. He contributes reports to “World News with David Muir,” “Good Morning America,” “Nightline,” “ABC News Live” and other ABC News broadcasts, platforms and primetime specials. He began his career at ABC News as a correspondent for NewsOne, the news division’s affiliate news service, in April 1997. Osunsami is one of the network’s longest-serving correspondents.
In 1998, Osunsami began filing reports for “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings,” primarily covering the southeastern U.S. That year, he began reporting on the first racially charged murder case of his network career, the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Texas. Osunsami interviewed the white supremacist convicted in the killing, while the killer was on death row.
For more than two decades, Osunsami has reported on the social justice issues of our time—racial discrimination, the wrongly imprisoned, gay marriage, the rights of trans Americans and the debate over the policing of black and brown communities.
Most recently in 2021, Osunsami led the team that investigated the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, producing a ground-breaking podcast for ABC News Audio, telling the story to a mass audience for the first time. In summer 2020, Osunsami reported on the racial unrest following the police killing of George Floyd for various ABC News primetime specials. Osunsami also reported extensively on the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic effects of the statewide shutdowns and the search for a vaccine throughout 2020.
In August 2014, he was the first network reporter on the scene of the racially charged police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and led the network’s coverage of the story. He was also part of ABC News’ Murrow Award-winning reporting team that covered the Baltimore riots in 2015, after the arrest and death of Freddie Gray. That same year, Osunsami led coverage of the racially explosive police shooting death of Walter Scott in South Carolina. He also led the network’s coverage of the mass shooting by a white supremacist inside a historic Black church in Charleston. He then went on to lead the reporting on South Carolina’s decision to remove the Confederate battle flag from their statehouse, a story Osunsami has followed for nearly two decades.
In 2000, Osunsami was the first ABC News reporter on the ground in Florida during the presidential election recount of that year. Twenty years later, he led the network’s reporting on the hotly debated elections in Georgia, where the vote gave control of the U.S. Congress to Democrats.
He also reported on major weather tragedies, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the struggle to rebuild New Orleans after the storm nearly destroyed the city. In 2011, he reported on the Alabama tornados that killed more than 200 people; and he’s reported on more than two dozen hurricanes over the years.
Osunsami’s extensive feature reporting has covered the issue of missing Black children who are ignored by police and the press. He has also reported on stories of survival and resiliency.
Osunsami was a correspondent for the Emmy® Award-winning broadcast of “ABC 2000: The Millennium” and has received dozens of awards for his work from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Columbia School of Journalism in 2002, where they recognized his insightful and consistent reporting on racial and ethnic issues.
Prior to joining ABC News, Osunsami was a reporter in Seattle for the ABC affiliate KOMO-TV, and a reporter and substitute anchor for the NBC affiliate WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For his work at WOOD-TV, he was recognized several times with awards from the Associated Press and the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. He began his career in journalism at WREX in Rockford, Illinois, where he was a reporter.
Born in Washington D.C., and raised in Peoria, Illinois, Osunsami graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana with a Bachelor of Science in journalism. He is the son of Nigerian immigrants. Osunsami participated in the Head Start preschool program for children of poverty, and in his adulthood has received awards from the program. He is married to Joe Remillard, an artist and art professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
