In his role as chief national correspondent, based in Washington, D.C., King is instrumental in CNN’s daily reporting and breaking news coverage. Most recently, King was a prominent part of the network’s 2014 Election Night in America coverage offering insight and analysis throughout the evening. As part of CNN’s America’s Choice 2012 election coverage, King reported from the trail and moderated three presidential primary debates. His analysis and use of the “Magic Wall” to visually bring the results and their impact to viewers was an integral part of the network’s Emmy award-winning 2012 election night coverage.

He previously anchored John King, USA, and in January 2009, he launched State of the Union with John King, the network’s Sunday political news program—visiting 50 states in 52 weeks to chronicle the first year of the Obama presidency.

During the 2010 election cycle, King moderated gubernatorial debates in Massachusetts and Florida. He was also a member of CNN’s 2008 Peabody Award-winning political team, when he broke news that Barack Obama had chosen Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate. King pioneered the use of CNN’s “Magic Wall” during the 2008 election, and contributed to CNN’s Emmy-winning 2006 midterm coverage.

King joined CNN in May 1997 and became chief national correspondent in April 2005. He served as CNN’s senior White House correspondent from 1999 to 2005, when his duties included reporting on the Iraq war and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

King traveled with Vice President Dick Cheney to the Middle East in March 2002 as the Bush administration began to build support for confronting Saddam Hussein. In December 2004, King traveled with Secretary of State Colin Powell to Indonesia, Thailand and other South Asian countries, and then remained in the region to cover the disaster and aftermath of the tsunami that took more than 175,000 lives in the region. In 2005, King was among the CNN crew that covered the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita from the U.S. Gulf Coast. In June 2006, he accompanied President Bush on a secret trip to Baghdad.

During the Clinton administration, King conducted an exclusive joint interview with President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair in Birmingham, England in May 1998. He also had the only one-on-one interview with President Clinton during his historic 2000 trip to Vietnam. King also was CNN’s lead reporter covering Vice President Al Gore in the closing weeks of the 2000 campaign and during the post-election recount controversy.

In addition to his domestic reporting, King covered a number of major international events, including the first Persian Gulf War, the U.S. military operation to restore the Aristide government to Haiti and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa.

He was among the first correspondents to report in 1991 from a liberated Kuwait and received the top-reporting prize for his coverage of the 1991 Gulf War from the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Association.

Before CNN, King was for 12 years an Associated Press correspondent, working in Rhode Island and Boston before transferring to Washington after the 1988 election. As chief political correspondent, King led The AP’s 1992 and 1996 presidential election coverage. During his AP tenure, King broke several major political stories, including Michael Dukakis’ selection of Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate in 1988 and Clinton’s selection of Al Gore in 1992.

King is a native of Boston and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Rhode Island. He also has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from URI and Hobart and William Smith Colleges.