Alison Morris is an American journalist. She is a former news anchor at NBC News.

Early life and education

Alison Morris was born and raised on

Long Island, New York Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United States and the 18th ...

, where she attended Our Lady of Mercy Academy, an all-female private Catholic college preparatory school. She later graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology from Yale University in 2001.

Career

Morris began her career in 2002 when she worked for CNBC Europe and '' The Wall Street Journal Europe'' as a reporter in Paris, France. In 2005, Morris returned to the United States and became a reporter for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. In 2010, she moved to FoxCT (now known as WTIC-TV), where she became one of the channel's news anchors. In 2014, Morris switched to Fox 5 New York, working as the channel's business news anchor. In July 2019, Morris was then hired by NBC News, where she has been a news anchor for the network's streaming service ''NBC News Now''. In January 2020, Morris additionally became a weekend anchor for MSNBC. On her January 26, 2020 broadcast on MSNBC, Morris was reporting on the death of retired basketball player

Kobe Bryant Kobe Bean Bryant ( ; August 23, 1978 – January 26, 2020) was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Widely r ...

, who was one of nine people killed in a

helicopter crash A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

earlier in the day. When Morris referred to Bryant's former team of the

Los Angeles Lakers The Los Angeles Lakers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles. The Lakers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. The Lakers play their ...

, she claims to have verbally stumbled and said "Los Angeles Nakers", immediately self-correcting to "Los Angeles Lakers". This caused many people to accuse her of saying the racial slur " nigger" on air, which she denied. The controversy led to the starting of a petition to have her fired, which gained over 184,000 signatures. Morris said she had stuttered, combining the words "Knicks" and "Lakers" into "Nakers". Morris left her role at NBC in May 2022, stating in social media posts that she planned to become a sommelier.

Personal life

Alison Morris lives in Manhattan with her husband, Scott. Morris is fluent in French and regularly travels to Paris to visit friends she made while working in the French capital. She is also a fan of the New York Yankees.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, Alison 1979 births Living people People from Long Island Journalists from New York (state) NBC News people MSNBC people American women television journalists Yale University alumni 21st-century American women 21st-century American journalists