Robert Bazell

Robert Bazell: Profile

Bazell has won numerous awards for his reports, which number more than 3,500 to date. Most recently he won an Emmy for his reporting on the medical care for U.S. troops in the Iraq war. When he was awarded the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for distinguished achievement and meritorious service in broadcasting, the citation said Bazell's "reports have exemplified the best reporting on science and medicine. From transmission of the AIDS virus to innovations in cancer treatment, from the perceived dangers of cellular phones to alternative modes of health care, Mr. Bazell brings intelligence, understanding and reportorial excellence to the task. Robert Bazell is an outstanding television reporter who recognizes when to speak, when to listen and when to tell."

His extensive tracking of the AIDS epidemic, which began in 1982 when there were only a handful of cases, has included reports from all parts of the United States, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and South America, and earned the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and the Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation. Bazell has won two Emmys for reports on the human brain.

During his career with NBC News, Bazell has reported on a wide range of subjects in the areas of science, technology and medicine, from throughout the United States and around the world. NBC viewers have long known that when there is a major breakthrough in science or medicine, Bazell will be there to explain it in a lively and understandable way.

Bazell is a 1967 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in biochemistry. He did graduate work in biology at the University of Sussex, England, in 1969, and was awarded a doctoral candidate degree in immunology at Berkeley. Bazell's book, HER-2: The Making of Herceptin, a Revolutionary Treatment for Breast Cancer (Random House, October 1998) was made into a 2008 Lifetime movie called Living Proof starring Harry Connick, Jr. and Bernadette Peters.

Bazell began his journalism career in 1971 as a writer for the News and Comment section of Science magazine. A year later, he moved to The New York Post as a reporter. In 1976, before he joined NBC News, he was briefly a reporter with WNBC-TV, the NBC Television Station in New York.