Former Denver News Anchor (and Best of Denver Hair Winner) Gets His NewsNation Star Chance

Among Leland Vittert's greatest accomplishments during his stint as a reporter and weekend anchor for Fox31 was his 2008 Westword Best of Denver award for best hair on a local TV personality. But these days, he's got more to brag about than what we described as his "pillowy coiffure that floats over his cranium like the sort of brown cloud not even the Environmental Protection Agency would dare oppose."

He has just been named the new primetime anchor for one of America's fastest-growing news channels — one perfectly positioned to reap conservative viewership benefits during the second administration of President Donald Trump.

On January 15, NewsNation, which expanded to 24-hour programming last June after its ratings spiked by triple digits, announced that Vittert would take over the 9 p.m. Eastern time hour on weeknights, succeeding Dan Abrams, who made his name covering the O.J. Simpson case for Court TV before becoming the chief legal analyst for ABC. Vitter will be preceded on the schedule by a show starring another ABC vet, onetime 20/20 host Elizabeth Vargas.

"We’re extremely happy to be bringing Leland and Elizabeth to our primetime line-up," NewsNation president of programming and schedules Michael Corn says in a statement. "They are extraordinary and experienced journalists who are fearless, smart and curious. They have traveled the globe to deliver the news, and they have each developed a loyal and growing audience here at NewsNation."

Vittert offered a canned quote of his own: "I am grateful to NewsNation for the opportunity to host a primetime program, and thankful to our passionate viewers who tune in every night. As a team, we take our role in the media landscape seriously and will continue to be a source of fairness to all."

This last claim is debatable. NewsNation touts itself as providing "unbiased U.S. news" similar to how Fox News spent decades claiming to be "fair and balanced." Likewise, Vittert opens In Balance, his signature show, with the line, "Welcome to the fairest show on television." But other news outlets and organizations aren't buying it, with the Daily Beast dubbing NewsNation "Fox News Lite."

The progressive Media Matters organization goes further, branding the service "just another right-wing cable network," and backs up this assertion with a slew of examples, including several focusing on Vittert.

"Dismissing the notion that the topic is racist, Leland Vittert attributed crime rates to the 'moral decay among urban Black youth,'" one passage notes. "Vittert opened his September 27 [2023] show claiming looting and rioting in Philadelphia backed a racist narrative about a purported crime wave across America. He added, 'The perpetrators are urban Black youth devoid of any moral compass and, in many cases, devoid of any regard for human life.'"

While at Fox31, Vittert dabbled in the politics of race, too. A November 2009 YouTube clip notes that in a piece about "a string of potentially racially targeted attacks in Denver," he implied "that police, for reasons unknown, would have been more responsive to the public had the victims been black."

Still, arguably the most memorable YouTube item from Vittert's reels in the Mile High City — a highlight of our 2012 roundup focusing on Denver TV news' five funniest bloopers — is one in which he delivers an intro to a weather story before a graphic in which the word "cloudy" is misspelled.
In 2010, Fox News lured Vittert away from Denver by naming him a correspondent in Jerusalem. From this base of operations, as detailed in his NewsNation bio, Vittert covered happenings in countries across the Middle East and beyond; he spent a month in eastern Ukraine covering a previous Russian incursion there.

Then, in 2014, Vittert moved to Washington, D.C., where he helmed a weekend afternoon newscast and parachuted into hot stories across the country, sometimes with dubious results. He was reportedly chased by an angry crowd during George Floyd protests in 2020 after those present discovered he was with Fox News. That same year, he was targeted with chants of "Fuck Fox News" while doing a remote report near the White House.

Despite such viral moments, Vittert's climb up the Fox News ladder eventually stalled. In 2021, he leaped to NewsNation, earning increasingly high-profile assignments as of late. For instance, he co-anchored the network's 2024 election coverage with Vargas and Chris Cuomo, who was fired by CNN in 2021 after allegedly helping his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, respond to sexual harassment accusations. These opportunities were essentially auditions for the spotlight he'll take on February 10, when In Balance will begin airing in Abrams's old slot.

Vittert's hair has a touch of silver now. But it's still as spectacular as when he was just another Denver kid with a dream — and a blow dryer.