Before Marcus DeShawn Fields ever stepped in front of a camera, he was knocking on doors in West Baltimore, notebook in hand, chasing quotes that didn’t make the front page. Back then, he was a metro reporter for The Baltimore Sun, covering neighborhood council meetings, protests, and court hearings with a sense of urgency and grit. “That job taught me how to listen,” he once said. “Not just for quotes — but for silence too.”
Today, Fields is the anchor of The Morning Brief on ABC News, a weekday program that balances headlines with deeper reporting on issues often pushed off the ticker — policing reform, sentencing disparities, and civil rights legislation among them. He doesn’t just report on policy; he gives it a face.
His move to national television came after years of work in print and field reporting. At CNN, he covered breaking news and politics but often gravitated toward stories that lived outside the mainstream cycle — wrongful convictions, juvenile justice, the intersection of race and sentencing. That lean into long-form journalism became a defining feature of his work
In 2019, Fields produced and narrated Justice Delayed: A System on Trial, a documentary investigating unsolved cases from the civil rights era that had quietly been shelved for decades. The film followed families who had waited half a century for answers, uncovering newly surfaced evidence and systemic failures that had left those cases dormant. The project earned him an Emmy Award, but more notably, it helped reopen cold-case investigations in three different states.
Despite the growing profile, Fields keeps a low public profile and prefers to let his reporting do the talking. He holds a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University and has said his most important training came not in classrooms, but in the city courtrooms and public housing offices where his early stories took shape.
Outside of the newsroom, Fields serves on the board of the Equal Justice Journalism Initiative, a nonprofit that funds investigative reporting focused on justice reform. Through this work, he helps mentor emerging journalists from underrepresented communities, encouraging them to cover legal systems with depth and accountability. “It’s not about giving voice to the voiceless,” he’s said. “It’s about passing the mic — and staying out of the way.”
His segments on ABC often feature personal narratives: a mother navigating probation laws, a public defender working five counties, a mayor trying to balance reform with public pressure. The tone is deliberate, never sensational. His goal, he says, is to create space — for complexity, for honesty, and sometimes, for contradiction.
Fields doesn’t see himself as a crusader or commentator. He sees himself as a connector — someone trying to close the distance between policy and people. “If a viewer walks away understanding one life a little better,” he said in a recent interview, “then the job’s worth it.”
Whether he’s covering Capitol Hill or community court, Marcus DeShawn Fields brings clarity and care to stories that demand both. His reporting reminds us that justice isn't just a system — it’s a story still being written.