Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

At KTTV in Los Angeles, Liz Habib had her own freedom. She didn’t have to be paired with a man, like in her previous jobs. Here, she asked the tough questions and was authentic to herself, both on and off camera. And everyone loved her on TV too, she said.

She’d get embarrassed when families came up to her to tell her how much she meant to them, asking for her autograph. But, the opportunity meant a lot to her, and so she said she held onto it with everything she had.

As the first woman to hold the main sports anchor job in Los Angeles, Habib didn’t just break big stories like Kobe Bryant’s death, but she created relationships with players, teams and fans. She felt like she could walk into a Dodgers game and know everyone in the stadium.

After 16 years as of May 2021, KTTV did not renew Habib’s contract. Throughout her 33 years in the industry, Habib said she would stay late in the office, work over 10 hours a day and sacrifice family holidays to pursue her career.

Now, as a professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, she said she shares her experiences with the SU community, never pretending or lying about the challenges she faced as a woman sports anchor and reporter. She said she always tells her students the truth: that the industry is hard, and it only gets harder.

“The mistreatment is because people turn the other way when they see it happening. It’s not like the opportunities haven’t been there. It’s just they get taken away,” Habib said.

When Habib began her broadcast career in October 1988 in Steubenville, Ohio, she said the industry was male-dominated. She made $3.93 an hour, working behind the scenes running cameras and teleprompters, she said.

Teresa Habib said that her daughter has always been strong. When Habib was in preschool, Teresa couldn’t even put out clothes for her because her daughter was always determined to pick them out for herself. Habib is the only girl in the family and the second child, but she took charge of the family, Teresa said.

“People have always had controversy around her,” Teresa said. “It was always her way. And she just didn’t understand that other people have good ways too. But she learned to understand that people have different ways in the world.”

Before shows, Teresa used to go and sit with Habib on set and would watch her switch on her “show face” when it was time to work.

Even so, Habib always felt a tremendous amount of pressure to work on her appearance, to an extent that other people called extreme, she said. But to her, it was just a way of being.

Once, Habib wore her hair closer to its natural curliness for two days and then went to have a blow-dry, which cost her $100 out of pocket. She came into work with her hair straight the next day, and someone in the newsroom came up to her and told her not to do that ever again, she said, referring to her keeping her hair natural. Furious, she asked them why.

“Let me just put it this way, it’s not doing us any favors,” she remembered them saying.

Habib grew up in Pittsburgh with six brothers, four of whom played college athletics, so sports was something she lived with. She dreamed of hosting the Olympics like journalist Bob Costas, but when she told someone of this goal, they told her to aspire to be someone who wasn’t a man.

The University of Pittsburgh alumna remembered her grandma, who lived down the street from her, encouraging her to do what local anchorperson Patti Burnes did on television. Habib said that her grandma saw she had talent in that area. She listened, and it was a good thing she did, Habib said.

“I didn’t realize I had the aptitude to be a sports anchor, because when I was young, there were no female sports anchors,” Habib said.

While interviewing for a broadcast job in New York City, Habib got the call on a Tuesday from KTTV in Los Angeles. The LA station told her they needed her there by Friday for a one-day-a-week show on Sundays. She told them she’d be right there.

KTTV turned out to be the first and only place Habib reported on sports. While at the station, she covered nine Superbowls and was in the locker room for countless champagne celebrations. She remembers Kobe Bryant’s 60-point last game, the Lakers beating the Celtics in Game 7 of the NBA Finals in 2010 and the Kings winning their first Stanley Cup as some of the best games she ever saw.

Kobe loved talking about his daughters. I loved hearing about them. Here’s Kobe talking with me about coaching his daughter Gigi and how she handled pressure. Love and prayers to Vanessa and the girls. :pray::skin-tone-3: #RIP

A photo posted by lizhabib

“When you report on sports, you’re a fan of sports. You’re not a fan of a team,” Habib said. “The only thing that matters is a great game.”

Throughout her career, Habib walked into locker rooms and felt players didn’t want to talk with her because of her different style of asking questions. She didn’t ask the traditional sports questions, she said. Sometimes she just wanted to know what they had for breakfast. And, she said she knew the men in the industry saw how the players and managers treated her differently.

Gathered around Dodgers manager Joe Torre in the clubhouse, Habib asked Torre a question about one of his players, Manny Ramirez, getting a haircut after he refused to. Torre was irritated by the question, she recalled. Habib — humiliated and sweaty — held the microphone steadily in her hand, knowing she had to be fierce and not back down. She refused to break eye contact to look at the guys snickering around her.

“I can’t cry, I can’t get upset, I can’t put the mic down,” she remembered thinking to herself.

As hard as it was, she took the mic back, asked a follow-up question, and put it back in Torre’s face, looking him dead in the eye. As a woman, Habib said she had coaches yell at her while reporting, and she just had to stand there and take it.

“I even hate saying it. I hate it. But maybe being a woman in sports was my obstacle,” she said. “It shouldn’t have been an obstacle. That shouldn’t have mattered. And I did the job as though it didn’t matter. But I suppose ultimately it did.”

Kobe Bryant was one of the few players that Habib said never questioned her being the only girl in the room. Asking hard questions could be uncomfortable at times for her, but she said throughout their 12-year relationship with him, he never talked down to her or treated her differently.

Habib was in Miami for the 2020 Superbowl when he died. As she went live from her hotel to report, she listened to a soundbite she asked the station to dig up of her interviewing Bryant about his daughter, Gigi. It was the first time ever she felt she couldn’t compose herself.

“I know that she personally felt it on deep levels,” Laura Diaz, the first Latina in Southern California to anchor a major broadcast, said. “And so you’re trying to be the constant professional that you are, while at the same time holding your emotions in check — because if you’re overly emotional, you can’t do your job properly.”

Zach Vinci, a Syracuse University sophomore, remembers sitting in Newhouse 2 for his class with Habib on Sept. 22, the day after the sexual assault protests on campus, when she told their class that they would go out onto the campus and make a story on what happened.

The broadcasting digital journalism major said it’s one of his favorite lessons he’s had in any class. Vinci said that Habib is not just an amazing mentor and professor but an incredible listener, adding that she always gives them a lens into what the world of journalism looks like outside of school.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories about how men in sports broadcasting have it a lot easier than women do,” he said. “Especially when you turn on the TV it’s normally always men talking, so it’s really great to have a woman’s perspective on that.”

While working in Phoenix, Habib was in a grocery store, and a high school-aged girl approached her asking if she would come to talk to her class. She remembered thinking to herself that if this girl has the guts to walk up to her, why wouldn’t she come to talk to her class?

Years later, Habib received a message on Twitter, from the same girl, Rekha Muddaraj, who went on to become a news anchor in Houston.

“The reason I’m here is because of you,” the message read.

Published on October 25, 2021 at 12:49 am