--- description: As the first Latino anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, Llamas is tackling sensitive stories without fear or favor. title: Tom Llamas Is Not Here to Take Sides image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte3e8d07809be520d/6998c99925f3ee9a09644fa6/250929LatinoLeaders_Llamas.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Sep 16, 2025 # NBC’s Tom Llamas Is Not Here to Take Sides ## Video: Tom Llamas | Latino Leaders [Watch (HLS stream): Tom Llamas | Latino Leaders](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/aG7JLXdE.m3u8) (3:06)  _Published 2025-09-16. As the first Latino anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, Llamas is tackling sensitive stories without fear or favor._ by [Charlotte Alter](/author/charlotte-alter/) ## Charlotte Alter Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Senior Correspondent  Tom Llamas outside of the NBC Miami newsroom in Miramar, Fla., on May 1, 2025. Tom Llamas outside of the NBC Miami newsroom in Miramar, Fla., on May 1, 2025.Matias J. Ocner—Miami Herald/TNS/Getty Images As the first Latino anchor and managing editor of _NBC Nightly News,_ in a moment of significant turmoil for Latinos in the United States, Tom Llamas knows he has one job. “I am a Hispanic reporter, but I’m a reporter,” he says in an on-set interview. “I’m not there to advocate. I’m not there to confuse people. I’m not there to take a side. Because I think my value, and the value of NBC News, is that you’re just going to get the news.” Llamas, 46, was born in Miami to Cuban immigrants, and throughout his childhood, the family watched the news in English and Spanish in order to get news from the island. Every interview with Fidel Castro was a major event. “Politics, elections, immigration, these were things that we were talking about around the dinner table,” Llamas recalls. Because his parents had fled communism, “I think they really realized that things like freedom of the press, voting, being an educated citizen, all those things are incredibly important,” he says. Llamas loved writing, but he hadn’t seriously considered going into journalism until a local anchor visited his high school and gave him a “blueprint” for breaking into the industry: get an internship, join the speech and debate team, take more writing classes. Llamas started interning at Telemundo at 15 and “got bit by the bug,” he says. “I’ve worked in newsrooms ever since.” At NBC, Llamas worked his way up from intern to overnight production assistant to campaign embed. He became a general assignment reporter in 2005, first in South Florida, then in New York. As a young reporter covering immigration in Miami, Llamas embedded with the Coast Guard as they intercepted overcrowded smuggler boats carrying migrants from Cuba to the U.S. One night in 2008, he recalls, they flashed on a light on a boat full of so many migrants that he couldn’t even see the bottom. “You just see these faces, and they’re stunned,” he says. “Because they know that their dream, their attempt at trying to get to the U.S., is over.” Llamas remembers thinking that “these people look just like me, like they look like they could be my aunts and uncles.” At one point, the Coast Guard pulled a baby from the boat, and Llamas’ camera crew caught the footage. After it ran on NBC News and Telemundo, the Telemundo news desk got a call from a woman who said the baby was her child. “She was seeing her baby and her husband arrested,” Llamas says. The woman was eventually reunited with her child, he says; the husband was deported. “When I cover immigration, and I’ve covered a lot of immigration stories, I go in there as a journalist,” he says, adding that his Spanish fluency allows him to get the migrants’ side of the story, while his press credentials allow him to get Border Patrol’s perspective. “I go in there without fear or favor. I’m tough but fair.” Llamas got his first stint as an anchor in 2011 at WNBC in New York. He became an ABC News correspondent in 2014, eventually becoming chief national affairs correspondent and weekend anchor for _World News Tonight_. He returned to NBC in 2021 as senior national correspondent and anchor of streaming platform NBC News NOW’s _Top Story._ Over the last few years at NBC, he’s reported on stories from the [2023 Lahaina wildfires](https://time.com/7009538/maui-wildfires-resilience-essay/ "undefined") to the war in Ukraine to the [death of Pope Francis in Rome](https://time.com/5762436/pope-francis-dies-obituary/ "undefined"). He’s covered big news events like the 2024 presidential election and was stationed at the big board on election night to update viewers as results rolled in. In June, Llamas took over from Lester Holt as the anchor of _NBC Nightly News_. “This was something that I’d always dreamed of,” he says. “But you never know if you’re gonna get it.” Llamas is in the anchor chair at a moment of tremendous upheaval for television news. More Americans now get their news from social media than they do from television, according to [a May YouGov poll](https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Trust%5Fin%5FMedia%5Fpoll%5Fresults.pdf "undefined"), and digital platforms are eclipsing news organizations as trusted sources. Still, he says, in a world of social media chatter and AI-fueled aggregation, the work he and his colleagues do is more important than ever. “You need organizations like NBC News that are doing original reporting,” says Llamas. “They’re not aggregating. There’s no news algorithm. We are out there. Our people are out there.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310765/tom-llamas/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310765/tom-llamas/"},"headline":"Tom Llamas Is Not Here to Take Sides","datePublished":"2025-09-16T11:28:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:54:29.346Z","description":"As the first Latino anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, Llamas is tackling sensitive stories without fear or favor.","url":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310765/tom-llamas/","keywords":["list","franchise","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte3e8d07809be520d/6998c99925f3ee9a09644fa6/250929LatinoLeaders_Llamas.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"creator":"Charlotte Alter","articleSection":"U.S.","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte3e8d07809be520d/6998c99925f3ee9a09644fa6/250929LatinoLeaders_Llamas.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310765/tom-llamas/","name":"Tom Llamas Is Not Here to Take Sides"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Tom Llamas | Latino Leaders","description":"As the first Latino anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, Llamas is tackling sensitive stories without fear or favor.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/aG7JLXdE/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2025-09-16T11:00:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/aG7JLXdE.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310765/tom-llamas/","duration":"PT3M6S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310765/tom-llamas/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```