ABC News’ Anchor Suffers from Panic Attacks on Camera

Matt Gutman is the chief national correspondent on the nation’s top-rated nightly news show at ABC News and he is revealing he suffers from panic attacks.

Gutman tells Inside Edition that “hundreds of times live on air I had panic attacks.”

Gutman says that it has happened his entire career and says appearing on camera for just a few seconds could leave him stammering.

“Many of those times I hemmed, hawed, choked, physically I couldn’t remember how to swallow,” he says. “I call it the paradox of the courageous coward. How is it possible for someone to go in front of war zones, swim with sharks be just scared of standing in front of a camera and be scared of what he supposed to say.”

His secret finally imploded in 2020 as he reported about the tragic helicopter crash that ended in the death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter, Gigi, and seven others.

Gutman mistakenly surmised that all four of the NBA legend’s children were aboard the doomed chopper. ABC News suspended him for one month.

The veteran reporter is among many high-profile people who’ve admitted to panic attacks, including Ryan Reynolds and Barbara Streisand. Former ABC News anchor Dan Harris revealed he’d suffered from panic attacks like this one live on the air in 2004.

Gutman is out with a new book called “No Time to Panic,” in which he reveals techniques he’s learned to deal with his panic attacks, saying, “what psychedelics helped me do was excavate 1000 pounds of grief and pain that was lurking inside of me.”

“My father had also been killed in a plane crash when I was almost the same age as Giana and my father was the same age as Kobe,” he added.

But he says his biggest breakthrough came when he decided to share the secret he had harbored for so long.

Watch his interview below: