January 2025

Scott MacFarlane has served as a correspondent for CBS News since 2021, reporting for all broadcasts and platforms.

In more than 20 years of reporting in Washington, Scott has earned 20 Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Awards. His reporting has led directly to the passage of five new state laws in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., to bolster protections for children in public schools, helping Scott secure the Anna Quindlen Award for excellence in journalism from the Child Welfare League of America.

At CBS News, Scott has covered the U.S. Congress and Justice Department. He has served as the designated House chamber correspondent for presidential State of the Union addresses and in-studio correspondent for election night coverage. He has covered Supreme Court confirmation hearings and was in the courtroom for all of the legal cases involving President Donald Trump in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Scott was the CBS News correspondent on site at the assassination attempt of Trump in Butler, Penn., in July 2024. Scott reported the first accounts of the shooting scene and emergency responses for CBS News in the moments after the shots were fired.

He also chronicled the largest criminal prosecution in U.S. history, covering the 1,600 federal cases brought from the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol siege.

Scott is heard weekly with special, customized reporting on major CBS radio and TV affiliates, including KNX radio in Los Angeles, WTOP radio in Washington, WCBS-TV in New York and KYW radio in Philadelphia.

Before arriving at CBS News, Scott served for eight years as an investigative reporter for WRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C., where he also served as a Washington bureau contributor to NBC Newschannel, the affiliate news service.

Scott was previously a congressional correspondent for the COX Media Group and its affiliate television and radio stations.

Scott has been a Washington-based contributor to Sirius/XM Radio since 2011. He previously worked for CBS affiliates in Detroit and Kalamazoo/Grand Rapids, Mich.

Scott began his career in Syracuse, N.Y., where he was an on-air music announcer and news reporter for WYYY-FM radio and WSYR-AM radio, and also worked at WTVH-TV in Syracuse. He was an active member and leader at WJPZ-FM and WAER-FM student radio stations at Syracuse University, where Scott graduated summa cum laude. Scott is the only person to ever be inducted into both the university’s WAER radio Hall of Fame and WJPZ radio Hall of Fame.

Scott is a superfan of ’90s R&B music and has coached youth basketball. He was raised in Highland, N.Y., where he was inducted in 2021 into the Highland High School Hall of Fame.