Hockenberry has appeared as a presenter or moderator at many design and idea conferences around the world including the TED conference, the World Science Festival in New York and in Brisbane, the Mayo Clinic's Transform Symposium, and the Aspen Comedy Festival. He has been a Distinguished Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and serves on the White House Fellows Committee.
Hockenberry started his career as a volunteer for the National Public Radio affiliate KLCC in Eugene, Oregon.[10] In 1981, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a newscaster.[11] From 1989 to 1990 he hosted a two-hour nightly news show called HEAT with John Hockenberry. During his 15 years with NPR, he covered many areas of the world, including an assignment as a Middle East correspondent, reporting on the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and 1992. Beginning in November 1991 he served as the first host of NPR's Talk of the Nation.[12]
In 1995, Hockenberry published his memoir Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence. In 1996 he appeared off-Broadway in his one-man autobiographical play, Spoke Man.[14] From 1996 to 1997 he hosted Edgewise, an eclectic news magazine program that aired on MSNBC.[15]
In 1999, he hosted Hockenberry, a show which aired on MSNBC for six months.[16] He reported on the Kosovo War in 1999. His weekly radio commentaries aired on the nationally broadcast public radio program The Infinite Mind from 1998 to 2008. He also served as host on The DNA Files for the series airing in 1998, 2001, and 2007. He began developing The Takeaway in 2007 and hosted the show from its 2008 premiere until August 2017.[17]
Hockenberry has narrated several nonfiction projects on healthcare, including Nova series Survivor M.D.: Hearts & Minds,Who Cares: Chronic Illness in America,[18]Remaking American Medicine.[19] He also narrated the eugenics documentary, War Against the Weak.[citation needed]
On April 2, 2008, he hosted the premiere of the series Nanotechnology: The Power of Small, discussing the impact of nanotechnology as concerns the general public.[22]
Hockenberry has appeared as presenter and moderator at numerous design and idea conferences around the nation including the Aspen Design Summit, The TED conference, the World Science Festival, and the Aspen Comedy Festival. He also regularly speaks on media, journalism, and disability issues. He was one of the founding inductees to the Spinal Cord Injury Hall of Fame in 2005.[citation needed]
In a New York Magazine exposé, published December 1, 2017, journalist Suki Kim accused Hockenberry of sexually harassing her and other women he had worked with on The Takeaway.[23]
Media criticism
In 2005 he wrote a scathing review of the Academy Award-winning film Million Dollar Baby called "And the Loser Is..."[24] The review was submitted to a disability website with the title "Million Dollar Bigot" as an exclusive feature. The essay was discussed in news articles globally, and Hockenberry was interviewed about it on FAIR's weekly news show Counterspin.[25] A short documentary film was made, also called Million Dollar Bigot, completed on July 13, 2005, featuring Hockenberry as well as many other disability activists.[26]
Hockenberry wrote in the January 2008 Technology Review magazine that on the Sunday after the September 11 attacks he was pitching stories on the origins of al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism.[27] He wrote that then-NBC programming chief Jeff Zucker, who came into a meeting Hockenberry was having with Dateline executive producer David Corvo, said Dateline should instead focus on the firefighters and perhaps ride along with them à la COPS, a Fox reality series. According to Hockenberry, Zucker said "that he had no time for any subtitled interviews with jihadists raging about Palestine." Hockenberry has further claimed that General Electric, NBC's parent company, discouraged him from talking to the Bin Laden family about their estranged family member. Hockenberry says that he asked GE, which does business with the Bin Laden family company, to help him get in contact with them. Instead, a PR executive called Hockenberry's hotel room in Saudi Arabia and read him a statement about how GE didn't see its "valuable business relationship" with the Bin Laden Group as having anything to do with Dateline. In another instance, Hockenberry claimed a story he did about a Weather Underground member would not appear on the Sunday edition of Dateline unless the 1960s family drama American Dreams, which followed Dateline in the schedule at the time, did a show about "protesters or something."[28]
Personal life
Hockenberry is divorced from Alison Craiglow, whom he married in 1995.[29] They have five children, including two sets of twins: Zoe, Olivia, Regan, Zachary, and Ajax.
Hockenberry met his first wife, Chris Todd, when he was in physical rehabilitation and she a manager at the facility. The couple had no children, and divorced in 1984.[30]
Sexual harassment allegations
In December 2017, author Suki Kim accused Hockenberry of sexual harassment, stating that he had sent suggestive emails and made unwanted sexual advances to her and other women.[31] He had left New York Public Radio the previous August, but NYPR president and chief executive Laura Ruth Walker said, "[H]e was not terminated for sexual misconduct.”[32] In a lengthy essay titled "Exile" that was published in the October 2018 issue of Harper's, Hockenberry discussed his "personal and public shame" regarding the episode.[33]
Works
Hockenberry, John (1995). Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence. Hyperion. ISBN978-0786881628.
Hockenberry, John (2002). A River Out of Eden. Anchor, ISBN978-0385721509.
^Lipton, Michael A. (June 6, 1994). "Man in the Driver's Seat". People (magazine). Archived from the original on December 13, 2017. Retrieved September 18, 2018.