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Tag: Alan Johnston

  • Alan Johnston awarded on anniversary of his kidnap

    Alan Johnston awarded on anniversary of his kidnap

    MUMBAI: BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was given an award by BBC World Service for his outstanding contribution to the international broadcaster.

    The award coincided with the first anniversary of Alan’s kidnap in Gaza. He spent 114 days in captivity and was released on Wednesday 4 July last year.

    The award was presented by BBC television documentary presenter Michael Palin in Central London at a ceremony to celebrate excellence, innovation and creativity in BBC World Service.

    BBC World Service director Nigel Chapman said, “Alan Johnston has worked across the range of BBC World Service output, both as an editor and a correspondent. He is a skilled all-round journalist with a talent for words; he has never shied away from the toughest assignments. His passport has stamps in it from Tashkent, Kabul and many parts of the Middle East.

    “He has extraordinary personal qualities. After his release from captivity in Gaza, he was calm and focused enough to report his own story in an unforgettable way. He later wrote a memorable and beautifully crafted essay for our programme, From Our Own Correspondent. His reporting is always of the highest class.”

  • Alan Johnston to tell story of kidnap ordeal on BBC

    MUMBAI: UK pubcaster the BBC has announced that its former Gaza Correspondent Alan Johnston is to tell the story of his kidnap ordeal in a two-part special BBC programme on 25 October.

    An hour-long Panorama special on BBC One will feature an extended Jeremy Vine interview and in From Our Own Correspondent, on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service, Johnston will tell his story in his own words.

    He spent 114 days in captivity after being abducted at gunpoint by militants on 12 March in Gaza City earlier this year. Panorama will feature reports from the Middle East, the US and the UK as well as interviews with those involved in the efforts to free Alan.

    In From Our Own Correspondent, listeners will hear him make a return to the programme to tell his story in detail.

  • Alan Johnston wins London Press Award

    MUMBAI: BBC Gaza Correspondent Alan Johnston was named the Broadcasting Journalist Of The Year at the annual London Press Awards.

    He was abducted in Gaza on 12 March. Alan’s father, Graham Johnston, and BBC DG Mark Thompson, accepted the award on his behalf.

    Graham Johnston said: “On behalf of my son, Alan, I wish to thank the London Press Club for this award. As a dedicated journalist, this, I know, will mean a great deal to him. I dearly wish it was Alan himself standing here and not his father. Again, thank ou very much.”

    Thompson said, ” Today is the 59th day of Alan’s captivity. I’d like to pay tribute to him, and I’d also like to pay tribute to his family – to Graham, Margaret, Katriona and Raymond – who have shown extraordinary strength and courage over these last few weeks.

    “We nominated Alan for the Broadcasting Journalist Of The Year award long before his abduction in Gaza – in recognition of his outstanding journalism over the last three years.

    “Alan stayed there so long, and stayed after so many other Western correspondents had left, because he wanted to tell the story of Gaza, and to tell it not from a studio in London or by voicing-over pictures taken by an agency or a freelancer thousands of miles away, but on the ground and among the people of Gaza. And he wanted to do that with real journalistic values: with humanity but also with objectivity and impartiality.

    “We are absolutely delighted that Alan’s long-term professionalism and dedication has been recognised by this award but – at the same time – saddened that, in recent weeks, he has had to pay such a high price. On behalf of the BBC, thank you, London Press Awards, for honouring Alan.”

  • Alan Johnston to host BBC’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’

    Alan Johnston to host BBC’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’

    MUMBAI: Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter who was kidnapped in Gaza last year, is the new presenter of From Our Own Correspondent (FOOC) for BBC World Service.

    During his career, Alan has written a series of dispatches for the long-running BBC Radio programme from the Middle East as well as Central Asia and Afghanistan.

    In one of the pieces that he wrote in Gaza before he was kidnapped, he admitted that the possibility of being taken hostage terrified him.

    During the 114 days he was kept prisoner by the Army of Islam, he spent hours working out how, once free, he would tell his story on FOOC. In October last year, an entire edition of the programme, some 27 minutes, was given over to Alan’s story.

    Commenting on his new job, he said, “I hope that the show might benefit from having a regular presenter, and one who has both contributed to it and been a fan for many years. The structure of the programme will stay the same however – the extraordinarily successful FOOC formula would be very hard to improve.”

    In a world where the correspondents’ stories must often be condensed into a minute or less, or perhaps confined to a single answer to a programme presenter’s question, FOOC gives them an opportunity to say a little more – to provide some of the context to the stories they are covering, to describe some of the characters involved and some of the sights they see as they watch events unfold.

    The show’s producer Tony Grant said, “I am delighted to be working more closely with Alan. In the past, most of our conversations were down crackly phone lines. He may have done loads of pieces for our programme, but I never got to meet him until after his kidnap ordeal. It will be great now to work side by side with him; he’ll make a really terrific presenter.”