Olivier Knox is a

French American French Americans or Franco-Americans (french: Franco-Américains), are citizens or nationals of the United States who identify themselves with having full or partial French or French-Canadian heritage, ethnicity and/or ancestral ties. They ...

journalist who is the chief Washington correspondent for Sirius XM. In addition to his career at Agence France-Presse and

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, he is most known for chairing the

White House Correspondents' Association The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is an organization of journalists who cover the White House and the president of the United States. The WHCA was founded on February 25, 1914, by journalists in response to an unfounded rumor t ...

and for his reboot of the

White House Correspondents Dinner The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is an organization of journalists who cover the White House and the president of the United States. The WHCA was founded on February 25, 1914, by journalists in response to an unfounded rumor t ...

into its original format, which saw the elimination of the tradition of having a comedian as the featured speaker and an absence of A-list celebrities at the event.

Education

He graduated from Columbia College in 1992 and obtained his graduate degree from

Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., United States, with campuses in Bologna, Italy, and Nanjing, China. It is consistently ranked one of th ...

. At Columbia, he studied with political scientist Charles V. Hamilton and Shakespeare scholar

James S. Shapiro James S. Shapiro (born 1955) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specializes in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. Shapiro has served on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakes ...

. He also studied at the

Middlebury College Language Schools The Middlebury Language Schools are language schools administered by Middlebury College. The programs comprise undergraduate and graduate instruction in 13 languages during two-, six-, seven-, or eight-week summer sessions. The Schools enroll ap ...

, where he took a course in Italian, and graduated in 1994.

Career

He began his career as an Agence France-Presse desk editor and worked as a Congressional and

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

correspondent for 15 years, during which he covered the impeachment of

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic no ...

's presidential campaign, as well as the

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

and

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

administrations. He covered the

for AFP from 2000 to 2009, right until

's inauguration. In 2012, he was hired by

Yahoo news Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associate ...

as its first

correspondent and later became its chief Washington correspondent. He also hosted a weekly political round-table show on P.O.T.U.S. for three years on behalf of

. In 2018, he was named the new chief Washington correspondent for

SiriusXM Sirius XM Holdings Inc. is an American broadcasting company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City that provides satellite radio and online radio services operating in the United States. It was formed by the 2008 merger of Sirius Sa ...

. He returned to the P.O.T.U.S. channel and is now hosting a radio talk show called "The Big Picture". He was elected president of the

from 2018 to 2019, beating

Major Garrett Major Elliott Garrett (born August 24, 1962) is an American journalist who is chief Washington correspondent for CBS News. Garrett is the host of ''The Takeout'' podcast and was a correspondent for ''National Journal''. Prior to joining ''Nation ...

of CBS News, 121 to 90 votes. During the

of 2019, he announced an annual prize of $25,000 for the best piece of investigative political journalism focused on accountability in state government. In preparation of the dinner that year, Knox broke with tradition by making a departure from the lighthearted and star-studded atmosphere of previous years' dinners and giving it a more serious tone with the invitation of historian and biographer

Ron Chernow Ronald Chernow (; born March 3, 1949) is an American writer, journalist and biographer. He has written bestselling historical non-fiction biographies. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2011 American History Book Prize for hi ...

, instead of a professional comedian, as the featured speaker. The dinner also saw reduced attendance of Hollywood celebrities from previous years. Knox welcomed those changes, saying that he wanted to return the event to its original roots and do away with the "celebrification" of the dinner.

Personal life

Knox lives in

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland. It is located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which in ...

with his wife, Jennifer Lewis, and their son. He is the son of Middlebury College professors Edward C. Knox and the late Huguette-Laure Knox, both of whom taught in the French Department. His father is American and his mother is French. He was born in Vermont, but grew up in both France and the United States.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Knox, Oliver Columbia College (New York) alumni American people of French descent American male journalists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people

Education

Career

Personal life

See also

References