Maria Elena Salinas, one of the best-known anchors in Spanish-language broadcasting, will join CBS News as a contributor, Susan Zirinsky, the unit’s president, told staffers Monday.
Salinas stepped down from her role at Univision at the end of 2017 after an on-air tenure of more than three decades. She is expected to contribute reports across CBS News broadcasts and to appear during coverage of the run-up to the 2020 election.
“It is an honor to welcome Maria Elena Salinas to the CBS News team,” said Zirinsky, in a prepared statement. “We look forward to sharing her important voice and journalistic credentials with our audience in a critical time for this country.”
Salinas has interviewed world leaders and covered many of the era’s major national and international news events. She has earned Emmys, Gracie Awards, a Peabody, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism. She was most recently the host of “The Real Story with Maria Elena Salinas,” a crime series for Investigation Discovery. She also covered the 2018 presidential election in Mexico for Telemundo. She contributed to CBS News in 2016, when she reported on the role Hispanics would play in the election for “CBS Sunday Morning.”
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During her time at Univision, Salinas was co-host of “Noticiero Univision” and “Aquí y Ahora,” a newsmagazine. She has interviewed every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter, as well as celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin and Gloria Estefan. She was one of the first female journalists in wartime Baghdad, and in 2007 co-hosted the first Democratic and Republican presidential candidate forums in Spanish for Univision. She also penned a syndicated column for a decade and is author of the 2006 autobiography, “I Am My Father’s Daughter, Living a Life Without Secrets.”
She began her journalism career in 1981 as a reporter, anchor and public affairs host for KMEX-TV, Univision’s affiliate in Los Angeles.