Ashleigh Banfield

Ashleigh Dennistoun Banfield (born December 29, 1967) is a Canadian-American journalist and host of Banfield on the NewsNation network. She is a former host of Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield and Early Start on CNN.

Banfield was educated at Balmoral Hall School, a private university preparatory school in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which she left in 1985 (also attended by her mother, Suzie [Holland] Lount, in the 1950s). She went on to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and French from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1988 and continued her studies in French at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, British Columbia, graduating in 1992.

Banfield began her career in 1988 at CJBN-TV in Kenora, Ontario, and at CKY-TV in Winnipeg later that year. From 1989 to 1992, she anchored the weekend news for CFRN-TV in Edmonton. She worked at CICT-TV in Calgary, as a producer from 1992 to 1993 and as evening news anchor and business correspondent from 1993 to 1995. Banfield won two Iris Awards in 1994 in the categories of Best News Documentary and Best of Festival.

Banfield was a freelance associate producer for ABC's World News Tonight during her tenure at CICT-TV. She covered the 1991 Bush/Gorbachev Summit in Russia and the April 1993 Clinton/Yeltsin Summit in Vancouver.

In the mid-90s, she began working for KDFW, first hosting News 4 Texas Daybreak and later co-hosting News 4 Texas at 5:00 and News 4 Texas at 9:00 with Steve Eager.

In early 2000, Banfield was hired by national cable network MSNBC after having won an Emmy for her reporting at Dallas broadcast station KDFW-TV. According to The New York Times, she "fit nicely with MSNBC's positioning as the news network of choice for younger viewers". She also hosted MSNBC Investigates, worked at NBC News, and became a host of HomePage along with Gina Gaston and Mika Brzezinski.

On September 11, 2001, Banfield was reporting from the streets of Manhattan amid a cloud of debris from the collapsing World Trade Center. She was reporting a few blocks north of the site when 7 World Trade Center collapsed behind her. After the initial reporting of the attack had ended, Banfield received a promotion, as MSNBC sent her around the world as the producer of a new program, A Region in Conflict. Banfield lost two friends in the World Trade Center attacks and sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder.

During the conflict in Afghanistan, Banfield interviewed Taliban prisoners, and visited a hospital in Kabul. Later entries covered her travels from Jalalabad to Kabul, as well as other experiences in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, she interviewed Father Gregory Rice, a Roman Catholic priest in Pakistan, and an Iraqi woman aiding refugees. After A Region in Conflict, she received the 10 pm timeslot with the show Ashleigh Banfield on Location.