Mo Rocca Accept Insight Award

By ChatGPT based on transcript of speech

Mo Rocca, storytelling has always been about more than entertainment. It is a way to connect people to history, deepen understanding and spark curiosity about subjects they never expected to care about.

That passion for uncovering and sharing stories from the past was front and center when Rocca accepted the fifth annual LABF Insight Award at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas.

The Insight Award recognizes individuals whose work enhances the public’s understanding of the role and evolution of media through impactful storytelling. Rocca, an award-winning correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning since 2011, was honored for a career that has blended journalism, history and humor across television, radio, podcasts and publishing.

Opening his speech with trademark wit, Rocca joked about his lifelong fascination with awards shows.

“As someone who grew up obsessed with awards shows, it's nice to be getting one,” he said. “My only disappointment is that the other four nominees aren't here.”

But Rocca quickly turned to the deeper themes that have shaped his career, describing himself as someone who has long felt “a compulsion to tell stories.”

He traced that impulse back to childhood, when he would summarize episodes of the television drama Dallas for classmates and listen to family stories told by his parents — his father recalling Depression-era Massachusetts and his mother describing her girlhood in Colombia.

“I grew up with a special sense of wonder about the past,” Rocca said.' “I'm the guy who pulls over to the side of the road to read historic markers, to know what happened in any given spot, to know who lived and died there before me.”

That fascination eventually became the foundation of his work at CBS Sunday Morning, where he said he has spent nearly two decades pursuing stories driven by curiosity.

“This past Sunday, I was reporting on a great Japanese American woodworker,” Rocca said. “This Sunday, it's the history of U.S.-Cuban relations, and a few weeks after that, it will be a look at chandeliers.”

He described working on the show as “like going back to college and taking only electives.”

Rocca also praised the producers, editors and longtime executive producer Rand Morrison for encouraging stories that surprise viewers and give unexpected meaning to a wide range of topics.

“How can we take an ordinarily ‘eat your spinach’ type story, like the history of civil service reform, and make it tasty?” he said. “Conversely, how can we take a story about a Broadway revival of the musical Cats — something that might sound like empty calories — and make it filling?”

Throughout the speech, Rocca emphasized the importance of historical understanding in an increasingly polarized world.

“They can help make us less quick to judge,” he said of stories about the past. “Over time, I've come to believe that the less people know about a particular subject, the nastier the arguments over that subject become.”

“And I think in uncertain times, stories about the past can make the ground feel a little steadier, a little firmer. They can help us understand the other. They can help make us less quick to judge.

Rocca said his goal with every story is to leave audiences “knowing more, just a little bit more than they did before, and eager to learn more.”

In addition to CBS Sunday Morning, Rocca is the creator and host of the podcast Mobituaries, a bestselling author and a frequent panelist on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Earlier in his career, he was a correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and later appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

The NAB Show, regarded as the premier global event for media, entertainment and technology, served as a fitting venue to honor Rocca’s distinctive approach to storytelling — one built on humor, history and curiosity.

Rocca closed his remarks with a line he said he hopes one day appears in his obituary: “Mo Rocca, comma, who made people interested in things they didn't expect to be interested in, comma, died today. Period. He was 135.”