Don Lemon (born March 1, 1966) is an American television journalist, best known as the presenter of CNN Tonight as well as a news correspondent on CNN. In his early days as a journalist, he anchored weekend news programs on local television networks in Alabama and Pennsylvania.
He then worked as a correspondent for NBC on its programming, such as Today and NBC Nightly News, after which he joined CNN in 2006.
Lemon is also a recipient of a Edward R. Murrow Award and three regional Emmy Awards.
Early life
Lemon was born March 1, 1966, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Katherine Marie (Bouligney) and Wilmon Lee Richardson. His father was a prominent attorney, who was part of a lawsuit successfully challenging segregation of public transportation in Baton Rouge. Lemon was born under the surname of his mother's then-husband, and discovered that Wilmon was his father when he was five. He is of mostly African-American ancestry, along with Creole; his maternal grandmother was the daughter of a black mother and a white father, who had French and Scots-Irish ancestry. He attended Baker High School, a public high school in the town of Baker in East Baton Rouge Parish. Lemon was voted class president during his senior year.
Lemon attended Louisiana State University and graduated from Brooklyn College in 1996, majoring in broadcast journalism. While at Brooklyn College, he interned at WNYW. He worked for Fox affiliates in St. Louis and Chicago for several years, and was a correspondent for NBC affiliates in Philadelphia and Chicago.
Career
Early in his career, Lemon reported as a weekend news anchor for WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama and for WCAU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Also, he was an anchor and investigative reporter for KTVI in St. Louis, Missouri. Lemon reported for NBC News's New York City operations, including working as a correspondent for both Today, and NBC Nightly News; and as an anchor on Weekend Today and programs on MSNBC. In 2003, he began working at NBC owned-and-operated station WMAQ-TV in Chicago, and was a reporter and local news co-anchor. He won three Emmys for local reporting while at WMAQ.
Lemon joined CNN in September 2006. He has been outspoken in his work at CNN, criticizing the state of cable news and questioning the network publicly. He has also voiced strong opinions on ways that the African American community can improve their lives, which has caused some controversy.
In 2014, CNN began to pilot prime time shows hosted by Lemon, including The Eleventh Hour and The Don Lemon Show. Following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Lemon began to host a special, nightly program featuring discussion and analysis of the event by aviation experts. After a realignment of CNN's schedule following the cancellation of Piers Morgan Live, this hour was replaced by the news program CNN Tonight; Lemon would later become the permanent host of the hour as CNN Tonight with Don Lemon. Lemon has also participated in CNN's New Year's Eve Live as a correspondent from a city in the Central Time Zone, most often alongside fellow CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin.
Lemon's outspoken criticism of the administration of Donald Trump and accusations of racism made him a target of the president. In January 2018, after Trump controversially referred to countries such as El Salvador, Haiti, and Honduras as "shitholes" during a meeting on immigration, Lemon opened the program with a proclamation that "The president of the United States is racist. A lot of us already knew that."
In October 2018, during a discussion with Chris Cuomo on Cuomo Prime Time amid the Jeffersontown shooting, Lemon argued that Americans shouldn't "demonize any one group or any one ethnicity", and that domestic terrorism by white Americans, "most of them radicalized to the right", were a bigger threat to the safety of the country than foreigners. He went on toask, "there is no travel ban on [white people], they have the Muslim ban, there is no white guy ban, so what do we do about that?” Lemon's remarks were criticized by conservative figures, who felt that it was "race baiting" and contradicted his suggestion that Americans should not "demonize any one group or any one ethnicity". In response to the criticism, Lemon cited data from a report by the Government Accountability Office stating that there had been 255 fatalities between September 12, 2001 and December 31, 2016, involving domestic extremists, and that killings by far-right extremists outranked those by Islamic extremists in 10 of the 15 years tracked. In the same period, no deaths were credited to attacks by far-left extremists.
In May 2021, it was announced that Lemon, along with CNN fellow journalist Chris Cuomo, would launch a podcast named The Handoff. The audio show will center around "politics and personal" and will be teleprompter-free. On May 17, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon was retitled to simply Don Lemon Tonight; Lemon apologized for how he teased the rebranding on his show, stating that he "didn't mean to set the internet on fire"—in reference to viewers who thought that Lemon would be departing CNN.
During testimony of Jussie Smollett on December 6, 2021, he said that he was in contact with Lemon during the early part of a police investigation into an alleged hate crime attack. While testifying under oath, Smollett claimed Lemon sent a text that the Chicago Police Department had doubts about his account of what transpired. Lemon has received criticism for not mentioning his role in the case when he reported on the trial late in the evening on December 6.
In February 2022, it was announced that he would be hosting a talk show for CNN's then-forthcoming streaming service CNN+ called The Don Lemon Show. However, only two episodes managed to be released in the service's sole month of operation in April 2022, before shutting down.
On September 15, 2022, it was announced that Lemon will co-anchor a new CNN morning show with Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow later in the year. On October 12, 2022, it was announced that the morning show will be named CNN This Morning.
Personal life
Lemon lives in an apartment in Harlem and has another home in Sag Harbor on Long Island, New York.
During an on-air interview with members of Bishop Eddie Long's congregation in September 2010, Lemon discussed being sexually molested when he was five or six by a neighbor teenage boy, and that it was not until he was thirty that he told his mother about it.
In his 2011 memoir, Transparent, Lemon publicly came out as gay—having been out in his personal life and with close colleagues—becoming "one of the few openly gay black men in broadcasting." He also discussed colorism in the black community and the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. He dedicated the book to Tyler Clementi, a college student who took his own life after his roommate outed him online. Lemon also stated that he has known about his sexuality since the age of five or six.
In October 2017, he received death threats laced with racial slurs; he filed a police report detailing the incident.
On January 31, 2018, Lemon's sister, L'Tanya "Leisa" Lemon Grimes, died at the age of 58; police concluded that her death was an accidental drowning in a pond while fishing. After being absent for approximately a week, he opened his show on February 6 by thanking everyone who wished him "prayers and words of encouragement".
Lemon met real estate agent Tim Malone in 2017, after which the two began dating. The couple announced in April 2019 that they were engaged.