Ashleigh Banfield

Ashleigh Banfield is an Emmy Award winning international television news correspondent and host who has reported breaking news from across the country and around the globe.

Banfield is currently anchoring and hosting three programs on the newly named TruTV (formerly Court TV). She, along with Jack Ford, is the co-host of a two hour live daily legal news program called Banfield and Ford: Courtside, a program that has earned her a Telly Award. She hosts a weekly evening show called Hollywood Heat, and is the Creator, Co-Producer and Host of the hugely successful prime time special series called Disorder in the Court.

Banfield covered the terrorist attacks of September 11, reporting live from the World Trade Center in New York City, work which earned her EMMY Award recognition. After eight consecutive days at Ground Zero, Banfield departed for Islamabad, Pakistan to begin covering the War on Terror. From September 2001 to January 2004, she reported live from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, England, Israel (West Bank and Gaza), Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. She anchored several prime time series including A Region In Conflict and Ashleigh Banfield: On Location in which she hosted live programs from locations across the country and around the globe, covering breaking news stories including the wars in Afghanistan, and Iraq, the conflict in Israel and the abduction of Elizabeth Smart in Salt Lake City.

As a correspondent for NBC News, Banfield appeared on the programs The Today Show, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, and Dateline. While anchoring on MSNBC, Banfield covered stories including the crash of the Concorde on location in France, the 2000 Election, traveling with the Bush/Cheney Campaign, and the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Her most noted interviews include Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minster Tariq Aziz, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade Masked Terrorists, Saudi Prince Al Faisal, Laura Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Martha Stewart, John McCain, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller, Rosie O’Donnell, Donald Trump, and Hugh Grant.

Prior to joining MSNBC, Banfield served as the 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. news anchor for KDFW-TV, the FOX station in Dallas. While there, she received her first EMMY Award for “Best News Anchor” for her coverage on “Cadet Killers” and a Texas Associated Press Award for the “Best Series” category on the controversial “To Serve and Survive.” Prior to that, Banfield worked at Canada’s CICT-TV, as a producer from 1992-93 and from 1993-95 as their evening news anchor and business correspondent. In 1994, Banfield earned two IRIS awards for the “Best News Documentary” and “Best of Festival” categories where she chronicled the life of a homeless man.

Before, and during, her tenure at CICT-TV, Banfield freelanced as an associate producer for ABC’s World News Tonight, where she covered the 1991 Bush/Gorbachev Summit in Russia and the 1992 Clinton/Yeltsin Summit in Vancouver.

In1988, Banfield began her career at CJBN in Kenora, Ontario, Canada as a photographer/researcher/reporter and then later moved to Winnipeg’s CKY station as a researcher/reporter for their evening news. From 1989 to 1992, Banfield served as weekend evening news anchor at CFRN in Edmonton, Alberta.

In 1988, Banfield received a bachelor’s degree in political studies and French from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. In 1992, she continued her language education in an Advanced French Studies program at the University of British Columbia.

Banfield works in New York City but lives in Connecticut with her husband, Howard Gould, and their sons, Jay Fischer Gould and Ridley Banfield Gould.