David Chalian is Senior Vice President, Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director for CNN. In his role, Chalian oversees the network’s Washington, D.C. bureau as well as CNN’s Washington political news coverage. He also supervises CNN’s daily political reporting across all platforms, the polling and decision desk operations, and the editorial content for special political programming. As CNN’s Political Director, Chalian appears across the network as an instrumental part of the network’s on-air political coverage.

Chalian joined CNN in 2013 and was named Political Director in 2014. A veteran of political journalism, Chalian has led the editorial direction of CNN’s debates and town halls for nearly a decade, including the network’s historic presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in June 2024.

Before joining CNN, Chalian served as Vice President for Video Programming at POLITICO where he oversaw all of the video efforts including POLITICO LIVE special events coverage and all new video program and product development. Prior to that, Chalian served as Washington Bureau Chief for Yahoo! News, Political Editor and on-air political analyst for PBS NewsHour, and ABC News’ Political Director.

While at the PBS NewsHour, Chalian oversaw the political coverage that won the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for excellence in television political journalism. He won an Emmy Award as part of the team that produced ABC News’ presidential inauguration coverage in January 2009.