SMPA Director Frank Sesno
Director, Professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs

Phone – (202) 994-9553
Fax – (202) 994-5806
E-mail – sesno@gwu.edu

Expertise

Media Innovation, Media and Politics, Political Coverage, the Cable Industry, Media Ethics, Energy and Climate, and Documentary.

Education

B.A., Middlebury College, 1977

Courses Taught

SMPA 179 Documentary
SMPA 199 Senior Seminar - Journalism

Background

Frank Sesno is Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, an Emmy-award winning journalist, and host and creator of Planet Forward, a ground-breaking web-to-television show seen on PBS and Bloomberg TV.  He is chief executive of Face the Facts USA, a new nonpartisan, multi-platform content hub and civic engagement initiative dedicated to elevating the tone of national debate with provocative facts found at facethefactsusa.org.

Sesno's diverse career spans over 30 years of experience, including 21 years at CNN where Sesno served as White House correspondent, anchor, and Washington Bureau Chief. As a professor of journalism ethics, documentary genre, and issues of fairness in media, he teaches how the media affects the creation of public policy. He has also hosted a ten-part series for public television that explores news and communication in the digital age titled, The Future of News with Frank Sesno, at the Newseum in Washington D.C.

As a journalist, Sesno has interviewed business and government leaders including U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan and former General Electric Co. CEO Jack Welch, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He covered stories ranging from the Iraq War, the disputed U.S. presidential election of 2000, and the historic series of superpower summits during the 1980s.

Before joining CNN in 1984, Sesno worked as a radio correspondent at the White House and in London for the Associated Press. He has won several prestigious journalistic awards, including an Emmy, several cable ACE awards, and an Overseas Press Club Award. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Sesno holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Middlebury College and serves on the Washington Advisory Board of the Posse Foundation, on the Board of Trustees of the Potomac School in McLean, VA, and on the Educational Advisory Board of CINE 2009.