1.
Jon Snow (journalist)
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Jon Snow is an English journalist and television presenter, currently employed by ITN. He is best known as the longest running presenter of Channel 4 News, Snow has held numerous honorary appointments, including Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University from 2001 to 2008. Snow was born in Ardingly, Sussex, the son of George DOyly Snow, Bishop of Whitby, and his wife Joan and he is a grandson of WW1 General Sir Thomas DOyly Snow and is the cousin of retired BBC television news presenter Peter Snow. Snow won a scholarship by Winchester Cathedral, and spent five years at the Pilgrims School. He grew up at Ardingly College, where his father was headmaster, in 2013, he recounted how the inquiry into Sir Jimmy Savile had allowed him to re-evaluate his own childhood when he was molested by one of the schools domestic staff. Snow subsequently attended St Edwards School, Oxford, when he was 18 he spent a year as a VSO volunteer teaching in Uganda. However, he did not complete his studies, being rusticated for his part in a 1970 anti-apartheid socialist student protest. He served as ITNs Washington correspondent and as editor before becoming the main presenter of Channel 4 News in 1989. In 1992 he was the anchor for ITNs election night programme, broadcast on ITV, he presented the programme alongside Robin Day, Alastair Stewart. Snow is known for sporting his vast collection of colourful ties, while working as a journalist in Uganda, he flew alongside President Idi Amin in the presidential jet. In 1976, Snow reputedly rejected an approach by British intelligence services to spy on his colleagues, at first he was asked to supply information about the Communist Party, but he was then asked to spy on certain left-wing people working in television. In return he would have received secret monthly, tax-free payments into his bank account, in 2002 he returned to radio, presenting Jon Snow Reports on Oneword Radio, a weekly show and podcast. He wrote regular articles for the Channel 4 News website and Snowmail – a daily email newsletter on the big stories coming up on the edition of Channel 4 News. In 2003, at the height of the dodgy dossier affair, Alastair Campbell walked into the studio to rebut statements by the BBC, without notes or preparation, Snow attempted to question Campbell about the affair. In 2004, Snow published an autobiography, Shooting History, the book was published by Harper Perennial and details Snows life from his childhood, up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The infamous US blogger has broken the best kept secret of recent times. Editors have been sworn to secrecy over Prince Harry being sent to fight in Afghanistan three months ago and these remarks provoked criticism from some viewers and media outlets. On 9 February 2009, Snow interviewed Lt-Col Yvonne Bradley, the counsel for Binyam Mohamed
2.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy
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Krishnan Guru-Murthy is a journalist on Channel 4. He presents the Channel 4 News and the foreign affairs documentary series Unreported World, guru-Murthys career began in 1988 on BBC2s DEF II discussion programme Open to Question and the youth current affairs programme Reportage. He then spent three years as a producer and reporter for BBC2s Newsnight and in 1997 became one of the presenters of the BBCs new rolling news channel BBC News 24. He joined Channel 4 News in 1998, aged 28, and is the second longest serving presenter after Jon Snow, between 2003 and 2009 he was also the main presenter of Channel 4 News at Noon. He has reported and presented from around the world covering many disasters, conflicts and political movements, for Channel 4, Guru-Murthy presented The Operation, Surgery Live, which featured live heart, brain and abdominal surgery and he hosted The Event – How Racist are You. He also appeared in a documentary about the band Gorillaz, entitled Gorillaz. Guru-Murthy presented his own radio programme on LBC97. He has appeared as a guest on the news show The News Quiz on Radio 4 and has had cameo appearances in several productions, including regular appearances in Bremner, Bird. He also appeared during short cameos in such as Shaun of the Dead and Dead Set. Guru-Murthy also hosted the Channel 4 quiz show Number One and two series of Going Cold Turkey, Going Cold Turkey featured drug addicts enduring withdrawal, live on television, as part of their attempts to stop using drugs. He used to write a column in the Metro newspaper. He presented The TV Show on Channel 4, a programme about television. He also hosted How to save £100 Billion – Live the night before the new governments Emergency Budget, in February 2010, Guru-Murthy interviewed the former Labour MP Jim Devine at length about his expenses in which the politician admitted moving money around. The interview became key evidence in court when Devine was prosecuted for fraud and his first film was from South Africa called Trouble in the Townships. He has since made Unreported World documentaries in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, America, in January 2013, Guru-Murthy interviewed Quentin Tarantino, who was promoting his new film, Django Unchained. Im not your slave and youre not my master and you cant make me dance to your tune. When Guru-Murthy tried to steer the conversation back towards the later in the interview, Tarantino continued. … And Im shutting your butt down, in October 2014, Guru-Murthy interviewed the writer, actor and director Richard Ayoade
3.
Matt Frei
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Matthias Matt Frei is a German-born British television news journalist and writer, formerly the Washington, DC correspondent for Channel 4 News. He is now the channels Europe editor and a presenter of the evening news. Frei was born in 1963 in Essen, West Germany and his parents were refugees who left Silesia before it became part of Poland, and settled in Germany. In 1973, Frei and his family left Germany and moved to the United Kingdom and he was educated at Westminster School, then read history and Spanish at St Peters College, University of Oxford, before graduating in 1986. Frei lives in London with his wife, Penny, and their four children, Frei joined the BBC shortly after graduation. After a year in the German section of the World Service, he moved to English language current affairs, in 1989, working as a stringer, he reported on the First Intifada in Jerusalem, then on the Persian Gulf War as London foreign affairs correspondent. He took up the post of Bonn correspondent in Germany on the day as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, Frei took a holiday in Zimbabwe and persuaded aid worker friend Katty Kay to become a journalist, from 1992 to 1996, he worked as Southern Europe correspondent, based in Rome, and covered events in Bosnia, Kosovo, North Africa and various Mafia-related stories. After working as Southern Europe correspondent, he worked as Asia correspondent from 1997 to 2003, based in Hong Kong, from 2002, he was the BBCs Washington, DC correspondent. In 2005, Frei reported from the centre of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, on 1 October 2007, Frei became the first presenter of the BBC World News one-hour Washington-based news broadcast, BBC World News America, supported by correspondent Katty Kay. For a week in July 2008, Frei presented the London-based BBC News at Six on a relief basis, a year later on 27 July 2009, Frei returned to London again to present the evening bulletin. In January 2011, Frei presented the BBCs Newsnight as a relief presenter, Frei presented his own BBC documentary on the life and times of the German capital, Berlin. It ran from 14 November 2009, freis last Americana episode was broadcast in May 2011. It was announced in May 2011 that Frei would be switching from the BBC to Channel 4 later in the year, Frei would serve as the broadcasters Washington correspondent for Channel 4 News, as well as reporting for the channels other news programmes. He has since returned often from Washington and has become a presenter on Channel 4s evening news slot. On 24 September 2016, he started presenting the 10. 00am show every Saturday on LBC radio, BBC profile Americana, from BBC Radio 4
4.
Cathy Newman
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Cathy Newman is a British journalist and presenter of Channel 4 News. Newman graduated with a first from Oxford University, where she read English at Lady Margaret Hall, after university, Newman briefly worked for Media Week and The Independent before joining the Financial Times at the age of 23. Her older colleague Alice Rawsthorn acted as a mentor at the FT, in 2000, Newman gained a Laurence Stern fellowship to work at The Washington Post for four months. During her period in the US, she followed the 2000 Presidential campaign of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and she joined Channel 4 News as a political correspondent in January 2006. Newman became the first female co-presenter of the programme in 2011, alongside this, she has also headed the team behind the FactCheck blog. Newman has commented that sexism was endemic at Westminster during her period as a correspondent there. She told Natasha Lunn in an interview for Red magazine in 2016, I’ve always wanted to right injustices, I suppose what’s changed is I’ve now got a keener sense of how journalists can hold power to account. In late 2013, she travelled with William Hague and Angelina Jolie to highlight the effect of warzone rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Newman also investigated the balance of the curriculum in some faith schools in the UK for the Dispatches series on Channel 4. A regular commentator on politics in media outlets, Newman has appeared as a guest panellist on Have I Got News For You and blogs for The Daily Telegraph. Newman was long-listed for the Orwell Prize in 2010 and again in 2011 for the blog prize and she was announced as one of the judges for the Baileys Womens Prize for Fiction in 2015. On 1 February 2015 Newman tweeted that she was ushered onto the street when she went to South London Islamic Centre for a Visit My Mosque programme in error, a spokesperson for the Hyderi Islamic Centre had said Newman had simply visited the wrong address. Later, The Huffington Post obtained CCTV footage which, appeared to contradict her account, Newman married writer John OConnell, whom she met at university, in 2001. Cathy Newman at the Internet Movie Database Cathy Newman on Twitter Cathy Newman profile on the Channel 4 News web site
5.
ITN
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Independent Television News is a British-based news and content provider. It is made up of three divisions, ITN News, ITN Source and ITN Productions, ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Sydney and Washington DC. ITN produces content for ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, UK mobile phone operators, online outlets such as YouTube, MSN, Telegraph Media Group, Yahoo. between 1955 and 1999, ITN was more commonly known as the general brand name of ITVs news programmes. Since 1999, ITV has used ITV News as the name for their news programmes. ITN was founded in January 1955 by the Independent Television Authority and it began as a consortium of the initial ITV broadcasting companies, with former Labour MP Aidan Crawley as editor-in-chief. One of those companies, the London weekday contract-holder Associated-Rediffusion offered the new studio space in its headquarters in Aldwych. The first bulletin was broadcast at 10pm on 22 September 1955 on ITVs launch night, the bulletin was presented by former champion athlete Christopher Chataway. From the start, ITN broke new ground by introducing in-vision and named newscasters, the unique, probing reporting style of Robin Day caused shock among politicians, finding themselves questioned continually for information – this had never been the case with the BBC. There was also some early tensions with the ITV companies, ABC Television, the ITV contractor for the north on weekends and Midlands on weekdays immediately called for shorter ITN bulletins. While the ITA ruled on a minimum of a 20-minute bulletin and he was replaced by Geoffrey Cox. As the ITN reporter and later ITN Political Editor, Julian Haviland, put it, My view was that at ITN we must be at least as responsible and accurate as the BBC, without being so damned boring. As ITV expanded, each ITV company that made up the federal structure had to purchase a stake in ITN. In 1967, ITN was given the go-ahead by the ITA to provide a full 30 minute daily news programme at 10pm on ITV, News at Ten began broadcasting on 3 July 1967 with a newscaster team consisting of Alastair Burnet, Andrew Gardner, George Ffitch and Reginald Bosanquet. It was initially given a 13-week trial run, however, the proved to be extremely popular with viewers. News at Ten was to one of the most prestigious news programmes of its time in British history with a reputation for high quality journalism. ITNs News at Ten also prompted the BBC to establish a fixed nightly news bulletin at 9pm, the Nine OClock News began broadcasting in 1970 as News at Tens rival. ITN also established other programmes in the ITV schedule, First Report, a lunchtime bulletin began in 1972 and by 1976, News at 5.45 commenced. ITN commenced producing Channel 4 News when the channel started broadcasting in 1982, the programme was launched by Peter Sissons, Trevor McDonald and Sarah Hogg
6.
Channel 4
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Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster that began transmission on 2 November 1982. With the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital on 31 March 2010, before Channel 4 and S4C, Britain had three terrestrial television services, BBC1, BBC2, and ITV. The Broadcasting Act 1980 began the process of adding a fourth, after some months of test broadcasts, it began scheduled transmissions on 2 November 1982. Indeed, television sets throughout the 1970s and early 1980s had a spare channel called ITV/IBA2. It was most likely politics which had the biggest impact in leading to a delay of almost three decades before the commercial channel became a reality. The campaign was taken so seriously by Gwynfor Evans, former president of Plaid Cymru, the result was that Channel 4 as seen by the rest of the United Kingdom would be replaced in Wales by Sianel Pedwar Cymru. Operated by a specially created authority, S4C would air programmes in Welsh made by HTV, since then, carriage on digital cable, satellite and digital terrestrial has introduced Channel 4 to Welsh homes where it is now universally available. The first programme to air on the channel was the game show Countdown. The first person to be seen on Channel 4 was Richard Whiteley with Ted Moult being the second, the first woman on the channel, contrary to popular belief, was not Carol Vorderman and was a lexicographer only ever identified as Mary. Whiteley opened the show with the words, On its first day, Channel 4 also broadcast controversial soap opera Brookside, which ran until 2003. On its launch, Channel 4 committed itself to providing an alternative to the existing channels, Channel 4 co-commissioned Robert Ashleys ground-breaking television opera Perfect Lives, which it premiered over several episodes in 1984. The channel often did not receive mass audiences for much of period, however. Channel 4 for many years had a poorer quality signal compared to other channels, Channel 4 also began the funding of independent films, such as the Merchant-Ivory docudrama The Courtesans of Bombay, during this time. In 1992, Channel 4 also faced its first libel case by Jani Allan, a South African journalist, who objected to her representation in the documentary The Leader, His Driver and the Drivers Wife. After control of the station passed from the Channel Four Television Company to the Channel Four Television Corporation in 1993, instead of aiming for the fringes of society, it began to focus on the edges of the mainstream, and the centre of the mass market itself. It began to show many US programmes in peak viewing time and it gave such shows as Friends and ER their UK premières. In the early 2000s, Channel 4 began broadcasting reality formats such as Big Brother and obtained the rights to broadcast mass appeal sporting events like cricket and this new direction increased ratings and revenues. In addition, the corporation launched a number of new channels through its new 4Ventures offshoot, including Film4, At the Races, E4
