She is the daughter of James Cross, half of the vaudeville team of Stump and Stumpy and Norma Booth, an actor.

Her work covering the Grenada Invasion won a 1983 News & Documentary Emmy Award.

Her first documentary, A Kid Kills, won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 1993.

In 2001, Cross joined the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where in 2010, she founded the documentary specialization.

[10] Her PBS Frontline documentary, Whose Vote Counts, won a Peabody Award in 2020.