{"id":371462,"date":"2026-10-13T00:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T00:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/371462\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T00:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T00:04:10","slug":"veteran-eyewitness-news-anchor-bill-ritter-honored-with-prestigious-governors-award-at-new-york-emmys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/371462\/","title":{"rendered":"Veteran Eyewitness News Anchor Bill Ritter honored with prestigious Governor&#8217;s Award at New York Emmys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">NEW YORK CITY (WABC) &#8212; Our colleague and close friend Bill Ritter was honored with a prestigious award at the New York Emmy Awards on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The Governors&#8217; Award honors Bill&#8217;s extraordinary career and enduring impact on journalism. Over 34 years at ABC News and WABC-TV, he has informed, inspired and connected with generations of viewers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Since publicly sharing his Alzheimer&#8217;s diagnosis in June, Bill has used his &#8220;<a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/abc7ny.com\/alzheimers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Living with Alzheimer&#8217;s<\/a>&#8221; series to document his journey and raise awareness about the disease.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">After accepting the Governor&#8217;s Award, Bill addressed a room filled with New York journalists, reflecting on his career, his diagnosis and the importance of continued awareness and support for those impacted by Alzheimer&#8217;s.<br class=\" \"\/>Bill recalled the pivotal moments that inspired him to become a journalist, calling out the audience&#8217;s younger journalists because they&#8217;re &#8220;all there for the future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Top Stories<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"iVcn UbGlr ibBnq qdXbA avodi DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE QGHKv HNQqj ICwhc Bkgbl ZLXw kSqqG rEBmF sfsRN \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/abc7ny.com\/story\/man-woman-shot-brooklyn-amazon-fulfillment-center-red-hook\/19932506\/\" aria-label=\"Amazon workers shot outside fulfillment center in Red Hook, Brooklyn 2026-10-12T22:09:52.000Z\" aria-describedby=\"Amazonworkersshotoutbody details\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"hsDdd NDJZt sJeUN IJwXl \" data-testid=\"prism-image\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/19933174_101226-wabc-amazon-shooting-img.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;The journalists reporting the truth and facts&#8230;it can&#8217;t happen any other way,&#8221; Bill said. &#8220;For all you younger journalists\u2014they can&#8217;t change that. It can&#8217;t be because if it does, then everything changes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">He emphasized reporting &#8220;the truth and facts no matter where they fall,&#8221; noting how this mantra drives Eyewitness News.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Focusing the end of his speech on Alzheimer&#8217;s, Bill spoke about finding a 2004 interview about his father, who also had Alzheimer&#8217;s disease. Bill reflected on one of the interview questions regarding public figures bringing attention to &#8220;the disease, the needs of the community for services and support.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;My answer, for me, it&#8217;s a calling,&#8221; Bill said. &#8220;If I can help by talking about it, I will talk about it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">You can watch Bill&#8217;s full acceptance speech in the video player above.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK CITY (WABC) &#8212; Our colleague and close friend Bill Ritter was honored with a prestigious award&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[136927,9,11,10],"class_list":["post-371462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-136927","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}