Eric Deggans

Eric Deggans is a critic-at-large at NPR, offering reporting and analysis on TV, media, film, pop culture and social issues for the network.

He moved into this part-time role in 2025 after serving nearly 12 years as the first full-time TV critic hired by the network, contributing as a media analyst and guest host during his tenure as a full-time staffer.

Deggans stepped back from full time work at NPR to assume the Knight Chair in Journalism and Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, overseeing classes on media issues, ethics and journalism and organizing its twice-annual Ethics Institute conferences. As a Knight Chair, he joined a collection of 25 other professors in positions endowed at 23 different universities across the country by the Knight Foundation.

He also serves as a guest instructor and member of the National Advisory Board for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, FL and works as guest host/interviewer the entertainment industry podcast and radio program on Los Angeles NPR member station KCRW, called The Business.

In April 2024, he was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, joining a roster of journalists which includes 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, CSPAN founder Brian Lamb, CBS Sunday Morning anchor Jane Pauley and NPR colleague Steve Inskeep.

Deggans came to NPR in 2013 from the Tampa Bay Times, where he served as TV/Media Critic and in other roles for nearly 20 years. A journalist for more than 30 years, he is also the author of "Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation," a look at how prejudice, racism and sexism fuels some elements of modern media, published in October 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan.