CBS News' Weijia Jiang To Emcee RTDNA Foundation's First Amendment Awards

Awards, RTDNA News,

Weijia Jiang Headshot

The RTDNA Foundation is honored to announce CBS News White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang will be the Master of Ceremonies for the 32nd Annual First Amendment Awards. Jiang will help the RTDNA Foundation honor nine outstanding journalists for their efforts to promote, protect, and defend the First Amendment. 

The First Amendment Awards will be held March 2 at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C. 

Jiang is CBS News’ senior White House correspondent based in Washington, D.C. Jiang’s reporting is featured across all CBS News broadcasts and platforms, including the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell,” “CBS Mornings,” and the CBS News Streaming Network. 

Jiang has covered the White House beat since 2018, including the transition between the Trump and Biden administrations. She has also reported extensively on the increased violence against the AAPI community and the resulting policy changes. Jiang has traveled on Air Force One on several occasions, both domestically and abroad. She has covered major stories for the Network including former President Trump’s impeachments, the 2020 presidential campaign and election, and the confirmations of Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. During her coverage of the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the answers to her questions during press briefings often made news. In 2023, Jiang won an Emmy award for her contributions to CBS Mornings. 

Jiang joined CBS News in 2015 as a correspondent for Newspath, the Network’s 24-hour television newsgathering service for CBS stations and broadcasters around the world. Since then, she has reported extensively on both the Obama and Trump administrations, the 2016 presidential campaign and election, the funeral of former first lady Barbara Bush; and the congressional baseball shooting that wounded House minority whip Steve Scalise. She has also covered a number of national stories such as Hurricane Harvey, the catastrophic Category 4 hurricane that hit Texas in 2017.

Jiang graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a minor in chemistry, and from Syracuse University in 2006 with a master’s degree in broadcast journalism. In 2012 she was inducted into the prestigious Professional Gallery at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She is an active member of the Asian American Journalists Association.

She was born in Xiamen, China, and raised in West Virginia, where she immigrated with her parents when she was 2 years old. She currently resides in Washington, D.C. with her husband and their daughter and son. 

The 32nd First Amendment Awards will honor the following individuals: 

Rashida Jones, President, MSNBC
Maria Hinojosa, Futuro Media
Jordan Wertlieb, President, Hearst Television
Keith Woods, Chief Diversity Officer, NPR
Hilde Lysiak, Former Publisher, Nogales High School
Connie Walker, Okanese First Nation
Sarah Koenig, Host and Co-Creator, Serial Productions
Jeff German, Investigative Reporter, Las Vegas Review-Journal (posthumous)
Boyd Huppert, Reporter, KARE-TV

Tickets are still available here.