Meet the Moderators: Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell of CBS News

CBS News, the network sponsoring Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, is focused on providing a televised forum for voters to learn more about the candidates, Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.

The job largely falls to Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, the pair of CBS political journalists moderating what may be the last event of the campaign to reach tens of millions of Americans simultaneously.

Here’s who they are.

Ms. O’Donnell, 50, has anchored “CBS Evening News” since 2019. She has a lengthy background in political and campaign journalism. Ms. O’Donnell joined CBS in 2011 as its chief White House correspondent, after more than a decade at NBC, where she covered the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon. Before that, she was a print journalist at Roll Call, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill.

In 2020, just before the pandemic, Ms. O’Donnell and the CBS host Gayle King moderated a Democratic presidential primary debate in South Carolina. Ms. O’Donnell and Ms. King were co-hosts of “CBS This Morning” from 2012 to 2019.

In July, Ms. O’Donnell said that she would step down from the “Evening News” after the election. She will become a senior correspondent at CBS News and contribute to its popular news program, “60 Minutes.”

Like previous debate moderators, Ms. O’Donnell has not granted interviews ahead of Tuesday’s matchup. But CBS released a statement from her, in which she said her goal as a moderator was “to ensure a substantive and civil conversation that helps voters understand more about what can be complex policy positions.”

Ms. Brennan, 44, has moderated “Face the Nation,” the flagship CBS Sunday morning public affairs show, since 2018. She is also CBS’s chief foreign affairs correspondent.

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