Stephen Sackur
Encyclopedia
Stephen John Sackur is a BBC
journalist who presents HARDtalk
, a current affairs interview programme on BBC World News and BBC News 24
. He is also the main Friday presenter of GMT
on BBC World News. For fifteen years he was a BBC foreign correspondent and he is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4
and a number of newspapers and magazines.
, Lincolnshire
, England, and studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge
, and Harvard University
's John F. Kennedy School of Government
. He is married to an Iraqi
, Zina Sabbagh and has three children.
of Czechoslovakia in 1989 and the re-unification of Germany in 1990. During the Gulf War
, he was part of a BBC team covering the conflict and spent eight weeks with the British Army. At the end of the war, he was the first correspondent to report the massacre of the retreating Iraqi army on the road leading out of Kuwait
. Stephen was based in Cairo
, Egypt
, between 1992 and 1995 as the BBC's correspondent in the Middle East and he later moved to Jerusalem in 1995 until 1997. He covered both the death of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
and the growth of the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat
. Between 1997 and 2002, he was appointed the BBC's correspondent in Washington and covered the Lewinsky scandal
. He later covered the U.S. Presidential Election in 2000 and interviewed President George W. Bush
. Stephen went back to Iraq
in 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussein
and was the first to report Iraq's mass graves of victims of the regime. He was also the moderator of BBC's worldwide broadcast of a debate on climate change with a panel of five world leaders from South Africa, the Maldives, Sweden, Australia and Mexico.
In 1991 he wrote 'On the Basra Road' (London Review of Books)
as the regular host of the BBC's news program HARDtalk
. He has since interviewed prominent international personalities including former US vice-president Al Gore
, President Hugo Chávez
of Venezuela, President Felipe Calderón
of Mexico, Shimon Peres
, Mahmoud Abbas
, President Jalal Talabani
of Iraq and a host of other leaders and politicians from around the world. He has also interviewed leading cultural figures including Gore Vidal
, Richard Dawkins
, Noam Chomsky
, Annie Lennox
and Vladimir Ashkenazy
.
Stephen Sackur was named 'International TV Personality of the Year' by the Association for International Broadcasting
(AIB) in November 2010.
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
journalist who presents HARDtalk
HARDtalk
Hardtalk is a flagship BBC television programme, consisting of in-depth half-hour one-on-one interviews.It is broadcast four days a week on BBC World News and the BBC News channel. Launched in 1997, much of its worldwide fame is due to its global reach via BBC World...
, a current affairs interview programme on BBC World News and BBC News 24
BBC News 24
BBC News is the BBC's 24-hour rolling news television network in the United Kingdom. The channel launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 17:30 as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic television channels, becoming the first competitor to Sky News, which had been running since 1989...
. He is also the main Friday presenter of GMT
GMT (programme)
GMT is a news programme on BBC World News that first premiered on 1 February 2010. The programme is hosted by George Alagiah on Monday-Thursday and Stephen Sackur on Friday. Each programme begins with the presenter giving the headlines then turning to the first story, giving the time in that part...
on BBC World News. For fifteen years he was a BBC foreign correspondent and he is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
and a number of newspapers and magazines.
Life
Stephen Sackur was born in SpilsbySpilsby
Spilsby is a market town and civil parish in Lincolnshire. England. The town is situated adjacent to the main A16 Trunk Road at the southern edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds north of the Fenlands, east of the county town of Lincoln, north east of Boston and north west from Skegness.The town has...
, Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
, England, and studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...
, and Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
's John F. Kennedy School of Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is a public policy and public administration school, and one of Harvard's graduate and professional schools...
. He is married to an Iraqi
Iraqi people
The Iraqi people or Mesopotamian people are natives or inhabitants of the country of Iraq, known since antiquity as Mesopotamia , with a large diaspora throughout the Arab World, Europe, the Americas, and...
, Zina Sabbagh and has three children.
Career
Sackur began working at the BBC as a trainee in 1986, and in 1990, he was appointed as one of its foreign affairs correspondents. As a BBC Radio correspondent, Stephen reported on the Velvet RevolutionVelvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
of Czechoslovakia in 1989 and the re-unification of Germany in 1990. During the Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, he was part of a BBC team covering the conflict and spent eight weeks with the British Army. At the end of the war, he was the first correspondent to report the massacre of the retreating Iraqi army on the road leading out of Kuwait
Highway of Death
The Highway of Death refers to a six-lane highway between Kuwait and Iraq, officially known as Highway 80. It runs from Kuwait City to the border town of Safwan and then on to Basra....
. Stephen was based in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, between 1992 and 1995 as the BBC's correspondent in the Middle East and he later moved to Jerusalem in 1995 until 1997. He covered both the death of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
and the growth of the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...
. Between 1997 and 2002, he was appointed the BBC's correspondent in Washington and covered the Lewinsky scandal
Lewinsky scandal
The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging in 1998 from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 25-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of...
. He later covered the U.S. Presidential Election in 2000 and interviewed President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
. Stephen went back to Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
in 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
and was the first to report Iraq's mass graves of victims of the regime. He was also the moderator of BBC's worldwide broadcast of a debate on climate change with a panel of five world leaders from South Africa, the Maldives, Sweden, Australia and Mexico.
In 1991 he wrote 'On the Basra Road' (London Review of Books)
HARDtalk
In 2004, Stephen Sackur replaced veteran journalist Tim SebastianTim Sebastian
Tim Sebastian is a television journalist. He is the moderator of the New Arab Debates and the Doha Debates, and was the first presenter of BBC's HARDtalk....
as the regular host of the BBC's news program HARDtalk
HARDtalk
Hardtalk is a flagship BBC television programme, consisting of in-depth half-hour one-on-one interviews.It is broadcast four days a week on BBC World News and the BBC News channel. Launched in 1997, much of its worldwide fame is due to its global reach via BBC World...
. He has since interviewed prominent international personalities including former US vice-president Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
, President Hugo Chávez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
of Venezuela, President Felipe Calderón
Felipe Calderón
Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa is the current President of Mexico. He assumed office on December 1, 2006, and was elected for a single six-year term through 2012...
of Mexico, Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres
GCMG is the ninth President of the State of Israel. Peres served twice as the eighth Prime Minister of Israel and once as Interim Prime Minister, and has been a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years...
, Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas , also known by the kunya Abu Mazen , has been the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation since 11 November 2004 and became President of the Palestinian National Authority on 15 January 2005 on the Fatah ticket.Elected to serve until 9 January 2009, he unilaterally...
, President Jalal Talabani
Jalal Talabani
Jalal Talabani is the sixth and current President of Iraq, a leading Kurdish politician. He is the first non-Arab president of Iraq, although Abdul Kareem Qasim was half Kurdish....
of Iraq and a host of other leaders and politicians from around the world. He has also interviewed leading cultural figures including Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox, OBE , born Ann Lennox, is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving minor success in the late 1970s with The Tourists, with fellow musician David A...
and Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland...
.
Stephen Sackur was named 'International TV Personality of the Year' by the Association for International Broadcasting
Association for International Broadcasting
The Association for International Broadcasting - AIB - is the industry association that represents and supports international television and radio broadcasters....
(AIB) in November 2010.