Gibson was born in Evanston, Illinois and grew up in Washington, D.C.. He attended the Sidwell Friends School, a private college-preparatory school in Washington. In 1965, Gibson graduated from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was news director for WPRB-FM, the university radio station, and a member of Princeton Tower Club.

Early career

Gibson joined the RKO General in 1966 as a producer and later worked as a reporter and anchor for WLVA (now WSET) television in Lynchburg, Virginia. In 1970, he moved to WMAL-TV (now WJLA) television, the ABC network affiliate in Washington, D.C. Gibson joined the syndicated news service Television News, Inc. (TVN) in 1974. For TVN, he covered the Watergate scandal investigations and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

ABC News

Field correspondent

Gibson joined ABC News in 1975. He worked as its White House correspondent from 1976 to 1977, a general assignment reporter from 1977 to 1981, and House of Representatives correspondent from 1981 to 1987. Gibson was a correspondent and fill in anchor for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and substitute anchor the on late-night hard and soft news program Nightline and World News This Morning.

Good Morning America

In 1987 he first became a co-anchor of Good Morning America. From 1985 to 1995, Good Morning America was the most-watched morning show on American television.

Gibson hosted and narrated the Maryland Public Television documentary Lucky Number, a program about problem gambling, in 1990.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Vice President Dan Quayle used part of an interview between Gibson and Reform Party candidate Ross Perot to claim that Perot displayed contempt towards the United States Constitution. On the October 22, 1991 edition of Good Morning America, Gibson asked Perot what Perot would advise President George H. W. Bush to do to "jump-start the economy". Perot stated that the U.S. helped Germany and Japan write their respective nation's' constitutions: "This was at a time when the industrial revolution had occurred. Our Constitution was written 200 years ago, before it occurred." He added that those nations "have an intelligent relationship between business and government." Vice President Quayle responded: "Mr. Perot, we do not need a new constitution. Our Constitution has served us well." When Gibson interviewed Democratic presidential candidate and then-Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton on June 28, 1992, The New York Times noted that Gibson repeatedly pressed Clinton to name his vice presidential candidate. Gibson interviewed President Bush on October 9 that year; Bush stated that he questioned Clinton's judgment, not patriotism, in traveling to the Soviet Union in 1969.

In March 1998, ABC announced that it would replace Gibson with Kevin Newman. Newman began hosting Good Morning America on May 4, 1998. Since then, Good Morning America began losing viewers to NBC's Today show. In May 1996, Good Morning averaged 4.17 million viewers daily, and Today averaged 4.43 million; that gap expanded to 3.12 for Good Morning and 5.26 for Today. He returned to the program as co-anchor from 1999 to 2006. In 1998 and 1999, he was a co-anchor, with Connie Chung, on the Monday edition of the ABC newsmagazine program 20/20. ABC reinstated Gibson to Good Morning America in January 1999 with Diane Sawyer as co-host.

During the 2004 U.S. presidential-election campaign, he moderated the second presidential debate in St. Louis, Missouri, between the two nominee candidates...Republican incumbent U.S. President George W. Bush and Democratic U.S. Senator John Kerry. That debate took place on October 8, 2004.

World News with Charles Gibson

In the summer of 1999, Gibson began substitute anchoring World News Tonight (its name at the time) regularly after long-time anchor Peter Jennings’s treatment for lung cancer prevented him from anchoring. On August 7, 2005, Gibson announced Jennings's death and the following day anchored World News Tonight, and was eventually offered the job.

Even though he was a leading choice to replace Jennings, Gibson could not agree with David Westin, president of ABC News, over how long he would be anchor. On January 2, 2006, Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff, veteran ABC News journalists, were chosen to be Jennings's permanent replacements. They had both been interim anchors.

Following Woodruff's severe injury on January 29, 2006, while on assignment in Iraq, and Vargas's announcement that she was pregnant, some critics questioned whether Vargas could sustain the program on her own, pointing to falling ratings. In July 2002, Cindy Adams of the New York Post reported that Gibson would become Woodruff's "Temporary Permanent Replacement" on World News Tonight. According to some reports, while GMA co-host Diane Sawyer had coveted the World News Tonight anchor chair, Gibson had one year on his contract left and threatened to retired if he didn't get that position, and as GMA was ABC News' most lucrative show it would be badly damaged if it lost both Sawyer and Gibson.

On May 29, 2006, Gibson was named sole anchor of World News Tonight, effective May 23, 2006, after Vargas announced her resignation from the program. She cited her doctors' recommendation to reduce considerably her workload because of her upcoming maternity leave, and her wish to spend more time with her new baby. She would return to anchor 20/20.

During the summer of 2006, the program's title was changed to World News with Charles Gibson. According to The New York Times, he had previously planned to retire from ABC News on June 22, 2007, but remained to anchor the newscast.

During the 2008 U.S. presidential-election campaign, he was a co-moderator with George Stephanopoulos, another ABC News journalist, for the April 16, 2008, Democratic Party's presidential-election debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama; it was broadcast by ABC News. Both moderators were later criticized in The Washington Post and other media outlets for their selection of insubstantial, "gotcha"-style questions. He moderated both the Republican and the Democrat ABC, Facebook debates at Saint Anselm College on June 5, 2008.

On September 11, 2008, he interviewed Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee candidate, her first interview after being named as presidential nominee John McCain's running mate. The interview received criticism of bias from conservative political commentator Charles Krauthammer, specifically surrounding her hesitance in answering a question he posed about the Bush Doctrine. Gibson has said in a subsequent interview with Michael Kay on the YES Network's Centerstage program that he simply imagined what questions he would ask Democratic vice-presidential nominee candidate Joe Biden under the same circumstance and asked them of Palin. It was later reported that he had asked identical questions of Clinton, McCain and Obama in earlier debates and interviews in the spring of 2008.

During Gibson's tenure, World News beat NBC Nightly News, anchored by Brian Williams, in the program ratings during 2007, the first time in several years. The two programs have taken turns at the top of the ratings among household viewers and the 25—54 age group prized by advertisers. Katie Couric's CBS Evening News remained a distant third.

According to reports, while ABC tried to persuade Gibson to stay on, he decided to retire. On September 2, 2009, ABC News announced that Diane Sawyer will replace Gibson at the World News anchor chair following his retirement from ABC News. Gibson anchored his final edition of World News on December 18, 2009.

In 1973, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded him a National Journalism Fellowship. The Radio and Television News Directors of America awarded Gibson with the Paul White Award in 2006, and in 2008 Quinnipiac University awarded him the Fred Friendly First Amendment Award.

Gibson's wife, Arlene Gibson, is an educator who recently retired as head of school at The Spence School in New York City, New York. She has also held positions at other schools in New York City and New Jersey, and was previously the head of the middle school at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1980s. She is on the board of trustees at her alma mater, Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

They have two daughters, Jessica and Katherine. On March 14, 2006, Jessica gave birth to Gibson's first grandchild.

Since 2006, Gibson is a member of the board of trustees of Princeton University.

On May 28, 1989, Gibson delivered the commencement address at Vassar College. On May 17, 2006, Gibson delivered the commencement address at Monmouth University's class of 2006's graduation ceremony held at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel Township, New Jersey. He was also presented with a doctor of humane letters, an honorary degree.

On June 17, 2007, Gibson delivered the commencement address to the class of 2007's graduation ceremony at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Gibson also received an honorary doctor of humane letters, as well as a framed copy of his father's 1923 college yearbook entry. His father, Burdett Gibson, grew up in Schenectady and graduated from the college in 1923. Gibson contributed an estimated US$75,000 to the college to help create the Burdett Gibson Class of 1923 Scholarship, which is awarded annually to a deserving student in need.

In 2006, Gibson donated $85,000 to Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, to establish the Langdon Gibson 2 Music Scholarship Fund to honor his brother Langdon Gibson II, who died in early 2006. His brother had started an informal music-concert series...using musicians from the Shenandoah Conservatory (a part of the university)...in his renovated barn in the nearby Middleburg, Virginia, area; the series later became known as the Windy Meadow Concert Series.