After a two-year hiatus, Emmy-winning journalist Elizabeth Vargas is returning to the nightly news as the host of NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas Reports, which premieres on April 3. Vargas, who co-anchored 20/20 and World News Tonight and was a news anchor on Good Morning America during her over two-decade-long tenure with ABC News, left in 2018 to pursue new ventures. Since then, she has hosted Fox’s America’s Most Wanted, the syndicated iCrime and Partnership to End Addiction podcast Heart of the Matter, and worked on documentaries.
Vargas cited the “historic news cycle” as the reason behind her decision to do the newscast of record five days a week. She expressed her excitement about being involved in a brand new cable news network, saying, “There’s something really unique and interesting about being involved in a brand new cable news network at the very beginning.”
The veteran journalist plans to make her NewsNation show the go-to program for mental health and substance use disorder issues. Vargas revealed she had been treated for alcoholism a decade ago stemming from a lifetime battle with anxiety and used her experience to write her best-selling memoir, Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction. She wants to cover the mental health crisis, especially for adolescents and kids, in a thoughtful way.
Vargas also talked about the enormous stigma around substance use disorder and the lack of understanding about mental health issues. She shared that she was forced to give an interview three days after leaving rehab on Good Morning America, and looking back, she realized it was outrageous. She also commented positively about model and actress Cara Delevingne, who used a Vogue magazine cover story to reveal she had privately sought treatment in rehab and was sober, saying it sends a powerful message that people can get better.
NewsNation is known for being an unbiased news source that delivers news content without any political leanings. With Vargas joining the likes of Chris Cuomo, Dan Abrams, and Ashleigh Banfield at NewsNation, viewers can expect to receive news of the day without any political spin.
