Ann Compton

Ann Compton (born January 19, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American former news reporter and White House correspondent for ABC News Radio.

Ann Compton graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois in 1965. She began her broadcasting career in Virginia, where an internship during her junior year at Hollins College (now Hollins University) led to a full-time job as the first woman reporting for WDBJ TV, a CBS affiliate in Roanoke. She established a State Capitol Bureau in Richmond for the station. In 1973, ABC News hired her and she reported from New York City until December 1974, when she was assigned to the White House.

Reporting for ABC News, Compton has traveled around the globe and through all 50 states with presidents, vice presidents, and first ladies through seven presidential campaigns. She is now the White House correspondent for ABC News Radio, covering her seventh president as an ABC White House correspondent, beginning with Gerald Ford. Weeks after the Watergate scandal came to an end, Compton became the first woman assigned to cover the White House on a full-time basis by a network television news organization, and she was one of the youngest to receive the assignment.

Twice during campaigns she was invited to serve as a panelist for presidential debates (1988 and 1992) and she was assigned as a floor reporter at the 1976 Republican and Democratic national conventions. In 2000, Compton was the chief Washington correspondent for ABCNEWS.com, where she wrote and anchored a daily political column, "On Background."

During the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Compton, among other reporters, was with U.S. President George W. Bush covering his trip to Florida to promote his education agenda. As the attacks unfolded, Compton was aboard Air Force One while the plane flew from Florida to other various parts of the country after the President was advised not to return to Washington.

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