Steve Capus Biography

Steve Capus is the former president of NBC News.

Early life and career

Steve Capus was born in 1963. He graduated from William Tennent High School in Warminster, Pennsylvania, and went on to attend Temple University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism in 1986. Capus began his journalism career in radio and print, working at several stations and daily newspapers in the Philadelphia area. Capus was a director at WCSD-FM, a nonprofit community radio station in Warminster, in the early 1980s. He worked at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia in 1986, and became an executive producer with KYW-TV in Philadelphia in 1990.

Capus moved to Charlotte, N.C. in 1993, joining the NBC News team as the senior producer of NBC Nightside, an overnight news program.

Capus then continued his career with NBC in Manhattan. During this time, he was the broadcast producer of "NBC News Sunrise" and then the supervising producer for Today. From 1997 to May 2001, Capus was the executive producer of MSNBC's The News with Brian Williams. He was also the executive producer of numerous NBC News breaking reports and MSNBC special broadcasts. Among them were the 2000 presidential primaries and election, the "Summit in Silicon Valley" with Tom Brokaw and the political series 100 Days, 1000 Voices.

Capus was the executive producer of NBC Nightly News from May 2001 to June 2005. During this time, Capus was the executive producer for NBC News' coverage of the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, the war in Iraq, and the "Decision 2002-2004" political coverage.

Capus was then promoted to senior vice president of NBC News, where he led the network news division, was executive in charge of MSNBC, MSNBC and NBCNEWS.com digital and mobile properties, and NBC News radio.

Capus served as a member of the following boards: NBC/Microsoft Joint Venture, The Weather Channel and weather.com, and The Newseum in Washington, DC.

President of NBC News

In November 2005, Capus was named president of NBC News. Capus has served as the arbiter of issues involving ethics, style, standards, safety and other matters that affect the Division's journalistic bearing. Capus reported to Steve Burke, chief executive officer of NBC Universal.

Capus successful reign as president began as Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. That storm coverage was the first of countless challenges he would lead the broadcast, cable and online news divisions though. From catastrophic weather events, dangerous war coverage in Iraq and Afghanistan, the historic election of Barack Obama, many successful election cycles and presidential debates, the Virginia Tech massacre, Arab Spring uprising, an economic and business meltdown, the establishment of NBC News Education Nation and even a royal wedding in London. It all added up to critically acclaimed programming, industry-leading ratings/ business performance and outstanding individual and divisional reputations.  While he led the news division NBC News was number one across all broadcast properties; MSNBC cable moved into a position of strength and relevance; MSNBC.com was fully integrated into the news division while dramatically improving major metrics including traffic and video streams.

Capus managed all of the NBC News properties, including the worldwide newsgathering, international partners, infrastructure of editorial &technical crews, production teams and correspondents;  NBC NightlyNews; TODAY; Meet the Press; Dateline, Rock Center, and the network'sspecial and elections units.  His purview also included MSNBC cable; NBCNews.com's digital properties such as TheGrio.com, TODAY.com, BreakingNews.com, NBC Learn and a multitude of mobileproducts and apps.

He was also subjected occasionally to criticism, and in other times lauded, for many controversial decisions he has had to make throughout his career - especially for those made during his time as NBC News president. He has stated that it is his job to try to balance conflicting opinions and to come to the decision that he believes is the right one. Capus has also received numerous awards throughout his career, including four Emmy Awards, six Edward R. Murrow Awards, one Alfred I. duPont and six National Headliner Awards.

Capus announced February 1, 2013 he is leaving the network.

Personal life

Capus' wife is Dateline NBC special segment producer Sophia Faskianos. They have two sons. Capus also has a daughter from a previous marriage.

George Zimmerman Lawsuit

Capus is named personally in a law suit by George Zimmerman against NBC News. Zimmerman claims that NBC News deliberately and maliciously edited audio tape to make Zimmerman look like a racist.

Deceptive Edits

Under Capus NBC News has been accused of four different instances of fraudulent edits to make political conservatives look bad.

- Ed Schultz edited 911 audio tape of George Zimmerman to imply racial motivation in killing of Trayvon Martin

- in 2009 Contessa Brewer edited a photo to hide the fact that a gun-bearing tea partier was African American

- coverage of congressional hearings was edited to suggest that a parent of a Newtown murder victim was heckled by a 2nd amendment proponent

- during the 2012 presidential election, Andrea Mitchell edited tape of Mitt Romney to create a gaffe where none existed

In all of these cases Capus took immediate actions to open investigations, conduct appropriate disciplinarian measures and take measures so that such edits would not happen again. Often, he was lauded for his quick, stern and fair handling of such instances.

After the Zimmerman edit, Capus traveled around the globe to meet with editorial and production staffers in all bureaus to explain what happened, why he had to take the disciplinary measures to took, and gave a reinforcement of NBC News journalistic standards.