Gideon Yago (born February 19, 1978) is a former correspondent and producer for MTV News and CBS News though he is most recognized for his contributions to MTV.
Yago was born in Madison, Wisconsin to a German mother and a Jewish American father who met in Israel. He graduated from Columbia University (where he relaunched the campus magazine The Blue and White and was a Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest-winning member of the Philolexian Society) and began working for MTV News during the presidential election of 2000. Yago first appeared on MTV as a contestant on the now defunct game show Idiot Savants in the mid 1990s. (His specialty category was "Colonial America"). A few years later he found a sign recruiting people for MTV. What he ended up signing up for was MTV's Choose or Lose campaign. By the end of his senior year at Columbia, he already had a position at MTV.
Initially, Yago worked primarily as a writer for the MTV News department. From 2002-2003, Yago wrote and produced the MTV News magazine "The Wrap" on MTV2. As his time at MTV progressed, Yago switched gears and began focusing on politics, rather than music, on MTV News. Yago has worked on award-winning documentaries on sexual health, the 9/11 attacks, fighting in Afghanistan, hate crimes, the 2000 and 2004 elections, and the war in Iraq. In 2005 Yago covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the devastating Kashmir Earthquake in Pakistan and India.
Throughout his career Yago has interviewed many politicians, musicians, and other celebrities including George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, Senator John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Vice President Al Gore, and Senator John McCain, as well as other prominent figures including former Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III and Bill Gates. Yago's writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Spin, and Vice magazines.
He wrote and reported episode #335 of This American Life: "Big Wide World".
Yago lives in New York City.
In October 2006, Focus Features bought Yago's film script "Underdog". According to The Hollywood Reporter, "'Underdog' is set in a small town in which one of its sons returns home in disgrace and must reconcile with the mother of a friend who died in Iraq. Meanwhile, another young soldier returns a hero, though the truth might be more murky."
