Barbara Ciara has more than 20 years of experience as a broadcast journalist. She has won numerous community and professional honors for her work on camera and in the community.

Barbara started off the year 2000 completing her degree Summa Cum Laude, at Hampton University, winning an Emmy for her series "Guilty Til Proven Innocent", and receiving honors from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for her reports on race and ethnicity. Her co-honorees were CBS' Dan Rather and producers from 60 Minutes. When people refer to Barbara's world of experience, they are talking about her global travels to get the story in Cuba, Saudi Arabia during operation Desert Storm/Shield, Europe, Haiti, and Mexico. The highlights of her stateside coverage include campaign coverage, and investigation on Klan activity in Hampton Roads, segregation on city land at Portsmouth's Bide-A-Wee golf course, a health insurance investigation that resulted in coverage for a terminally ill man, and her one on one interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Barbara Ciara has produced a number of works that bring history into perspective with today's world, such as her award winning documentary on "Massive Resistance" in Virginia with compelling interviews of the "Norfolk 17", the students who integrated Norfolk School in 1959. It's the kind of reporting that gets noticed. Barbara has received the 1997 Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association, 1997 Emmy nomination for "Operation Haiti" featuring children living in poverty on the island nation, 1995 Emmy nomination for the series "Letters from the Hood" a gripping story documenting the lives of children who live in violent urban areas. Ciara has also been honored with numerous Associated Press and United Press International awards dating back to 1986, as well as a dozen prestigious "Excel" awards from the Hampton Roads Black Media Professionals.

Her career began in Tucson, Arizona where she worked on the school newspaper at Pima Community College while also attending the University of Arizona. During her junior year she left college to take a full time position at KZAZ-TV in Tucson, Arizona in 1976. Over a five year period she worked in production as an audio director, technical director, and later in news as a photographer, reporter, assignment editor, producer, noon anchor, and finally news director. At the time, 1978, she was the youngest female and first African-American to achieve the management status of news director at a commercial television station in the southwest. Barbara is currently the Managing Editor at WTKR NewsChannel 3. She is working with the management team behind the scenes to enhance the local coverage of WTKR and help her new team live up to the promise of "Coverage You Can Count On." Barbara has worked at both the NBC and ABC affiliates in the Hampton Roads area, and she broke new ground in February 1997 when she took on the challenge of managing editor of L-N-C, a first of its kind partnership between commercial television, cable, and the Virginian-Pilot newspaper. There she helped to develop a format, cross train print reporters, and launch the 24 hour NewsChannel partnership. She held that position for two years.

From the fall of 1996 to the summer of 2000, Barbara also served as managing editor of the partnership between WVEC-TV and WHRO public television where her duties included producing and co-hosting the NewsMagazine "This Week In Hampton Roads." Barbara is also a believer in public service and has worked with a number of non-profit organizations. She served two terms on the board of the National Association of Black Journalists, and was executive producer of the NABJ's first nationally broadcast awards program on B-E-T originating in Nashville, Tennessee in 1996. Ciara has formally served on the board of the Virginia Marine Science Museum, and the advisory board for the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia Inc., the Virginia Stage Company, the American Red Cross, and the American Heart Association. Barbara also volunteers her time to the Tidewater AIDS Crisis Taskforce, Habitat for Humanity, Children's Hospital of the Kings Daughters, American Cancer Society, Candi House, the Urban League of Hampton Roads, the Joy Fund, and the Boys and Girls Clubs.

Barbara Ciara Managing Editor/Anchor WTKR NewsChannel 3 Norfolk, Virginia PRESIDENT'S CORNER LINKS Past Messages President's Biography Letter to the FCC On Minority Media Ownership