NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel opened up to the Houston Chronicle last week about his Texas visit, serving three purposes — two work and one very personal:
“And the fact that my family life is more complicated than I expected it to be. It’s not just that I had a child, I had a child with profound special needs who’s going to need lifelong care, unless we get some amazing news out of Houston … It weighs on me. But I still believe that you need to go where the stories are…If you do this job, it comes with certain risks. You try and be smart about things. But if I didn’t want to take any risks, I would have to find another kind of job.”
Engel is also visiting the Texas Children’s Hospital with his family this weekend for an update on the research being done on his son’s debilitating genetic disorder.
Third, Engel is one of a number of NBC Newsers, thought-leaders and decision-makers down in the Lonestar State this weekend for the Texas Tribune Festival, which is taking place in Austin.
On Friday evening, he was part of a national security panel named The Threat Assessment, and he’s anchoring his MSNBC program On Assignment with Richard Engel program from Houston on Sunday evening.