• Barbara Pinto

    ABC News Correspondent
    Photos

    Barbara Pinto is an ABC News correspondent based in the Network’s Chicago bureau. She reports for “World News with Diane Sawyer,” “Good Morning America,” “Nightline” and other ABC News broadcasts and platforms.

    Pinto joined ABC News in October 2001. Since then she has covered a wide variety of stories, from the collapse of the mortgage and auto industries to the ferocious floods that threatened North Dakota and Minnesota in 2009 and devastated towns along the Mississippi River in 2008. She reported on the culture of corruption that led to the arrest of two Illinois state governors, and on a groundbreaking chain of kidney transplants touched off by an altruistic donor and one doctor’s cutting-edge method of pairing recipients and donors.

    In 2006 Pinto reported on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She spent nearly a month following the tens of thousands of evacuees who were living at Houston’s Astrodome. There she covered evacuees’ desperate search for missing family members and their struggles to start over. She also reported on the challenges that cities like Houston faced after absorbing so many people in need, specifically the impact on city services, school districts and the community as a whole. During Hurricane Wilma, one of the strongest storms in recent history, she took a perilous trip with the “hurricane hunters” who were tracking it, repeatedly flying through the eye of the storm so that scientists could gauge its path and intensity.

    In 2005 Pinto covered the trial of serial killer Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK killer, who had terrorized the Wichita area since the 1970s. In 2004 she reported from Florida on the devastation and relief efforts following Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan. She has reported on a number of other major issues, including the landmark decision by the Illinois Governor to clear death row and the medical and ethical questions raised by the advancement of genetic testing.

    Previously Pinto worked for ABC NewsOne, the network’s affiliate news service, where she reported on the White House, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. Among the stories she covered were the war on terror, the anthrax scare on Capitol Hill and the Congressional investigation into the collapse of Enron.

    Before joining ABC News, she was a correspondent at CNBC, where she followed the dot-com implosion and economic trends. She contributed in-depth weekly segments for the internationally syndicated “Wall Street Journal Report” and also served as a news anchor at both MSNBC and at CNBC. Before that, she was a correspondent and bureau chief at WFSB-TV, the CBS affiliate in Hartford.

    Pinto’s work has earned recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, New York Broadcasters Association and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. A native of New York, she is a graduate of Houghton College.