Gio Benitez, ABC News transportation correspondent and co-anchor of “Good Morning America” Saturday and Sunday, was the keynote speaker of the opening General Session at PRSA’s ICON 2024 in Anaheim, Calif., today.
Benitez talked about how he started out and recounted watching the local Miami news as a child. He shared a memory of hiding under a table when he was 7 years old during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. “I realized how incredibly important it was to inform the public,” he said.
“That’s how I realized how important local news was,” Benitez said, adding that he knew there was a future for him in television, sharing the news and telling stories.
Early on, he worked for Channel 6 News in Miami as a junior broadcaster when he was 13 years old, helping them with reports.
“I was always bugging people, I was always emailing people, trying to get in and volunteer for different things,” he said. Shortly after, he became involved with the group Neighbors 4 Neighbors, serving the local community and helping people during hurricanes.
Then he started at the station as an Emma L. Bowen Foundation work-study scholar, and that organization, he said, really gave him the start to his career. “I would work full-time for Channel 4 in Miami, and they would match whatever I made. That’s how I would pay for school because I grew up with a single mother who couldn’t afford to help me with college.”
By 2008, there were massive layoffs in the media industry, but he persevered and became an investigative producer at 22 years old.
On the power of ‘yes’:
“I always had that itch to want to become a reporter,” Benitez said.
The power of “yes” and taking chances on something you’re unsure of is so important. “When I look back at all of these things that were very scary, it’s all about saying ‘yes,’ especially when you’re faced with that fear to say, ‘no,’” he said.
“So often, we’re all faced with that fear in many different ways. And I think at that moment, whether there’s a call to action to say yes or no — or whether you just believe you should be making a yes or no answer at that point in time — when you make that yes answer, it’s so incredibly powerful.”
On managing setbacks and embracing mistakes:
Benitez recounted a story of losing his iPhone while on a cruise, which he says is an event that helped kickstart his career as a reporter.
He went to replace it and waited for hours in a long line to get the latest iPhone, which was the first model to have video. He realized there was a story there and pitched the idea of recording the story of people waiting in line with the actual iPhone. It was the first time a reporter had ever shot a TV story entirely with an iPhone.
His boss realized he could tell a story and asked him to do a follow-up on the response to the iPhone story. However, in June 2009, the day it was supposed to air, Michael Jackson died, which became the top story. While Benitez’s iPhone story was buried, he thought creatively and pitched a new story about how Michael Jackson meant different things to different people — a beloved child star to his mom’s generation, but someone who was often facing allegations for his generation.
After previously telling him no, Benitez’s boss gave him a shot at being a reporter.
Benitez next got the chance to be a weekend reporter, filling in on morning news for the local CBS station in Miami, but while trying to tease a story, he botched his wording on live TV. He played the old video clip for the audience, showing him flubbing up and unable to get the right words out about an incident while on the air.
“Those mistakes [and issues] allow you to grow, and when you’re faced with those again, you’ll know how to solve them,” he said.
Instead of taking him off the air, his boss introduced him to people in the industry and asked them what they did when they face these setbacks and disappointments, or made mistakes like this, and Benitez learned from each of them.
He also encouraged the audience not to dismiss people when something goes wrong, adding that we need people to support and believe in us.
“It sucks when the mistakes happen, but they do happen and should happen. So don’t be afraid of that,” said Benitez, who joined ABC News in 2013.
During his time with the network, he has covered high-profile stories, including the Pulse nightclub shooting, El Chapo’s escape from prison in Mexico and the Boston Marathon bombing.
On storytelling techniques and secrets of the inbox:
“Storytelling is what we all do — whether we are paid to be reporters on TV or not — because it is quite literally how humans communicate. It’s true for everything we do,” said Benitez.
“What is my storytelling technique?” he continued. “[Pretending] that I’m talking to one person and not millions. I also ask myself: ‘Why should I care?’ And I try to remove myself from the story. The answer to that question will inform how I start delivering that [news]. Those first words that come out of your mouth should tell you why you care.”
During an interview with PRSA’s editorial team at ICON 2024, Benitez discussed the different elements that go into the morning TV news show format:
