For the last 30 years, Jeremy Bowen has covered every major event on the planet for the BBC. From the war in El Salvador to the Romanian revolution, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, South Africa, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Arab revolutions, the war in Syria… Jeremy Bowen has been everywhere. He has received many awards, as both a television and radio journalist, including three Bayeux-Calvados Awards.
Born in 1960 in Wales, Jeremy Bowen joined the BBC in 1984 and has spent a large part of his career as a war correspondent, beginning in El Salvador in 1989. He has produced reports from more than 70 different countries (including the Romanian revolution, the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, South Africa, Israel and Palestine, Rwanda, Algeria, Chechnya, Yugoslavia, 11 September 2001 and Yemen) He covered the conflicts of the Bosnia-Herzegovina civil war and in Kosovo in 1999. He was the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, based in Jerusalem, from 1995 to 2000, and has been the BBC’s Middle East Editor since 2005. In February 2011 he was the first British journalist to interview Muammar Gaddafi at the start of the civil war in Libya. He has been covering the war in Syria for the past six years and is currently covering the battle for Mosul.
« It is a great honour to be this year’s President of the Bayeux jury. The Bayeux war reporting prize has a brilliant reputation, and I’ve been proud to have been a winner in the past. Bayeux’s history makes it the perfect place to be able to discuss — and celebrate — the best journalism from the most demanding parts of the world.
Good journalism, in all different media, has never been more necessary. All the players in modern conflicts want to control the media battlefield. It is our job to shine a light into the world’s darkest corners, to do the best we can to find the truth and report it.
Plenty of bad people want to stop that happening, which is why it’s a dangerous time to be in the news business. The welcome offered by the people of Bayeux at this unique festival offers a moment of peace to think about what we do — and to work out how we can do better.» Jeremy Bowen
Awards
Royal Television Society 1995 (death of Rabin), Monte Carlo TV Festival (siege of Mostar)
New York TV Festival (siege of Mostar), Sony Gold Award (arrest of Saddam Hussein)
Sian Phllips Bafta Cymru award for significant contribution to international feature filmmaking or network television.
Emmy for Syria coverage, Peabody award for Syria coverage
Royal Television Society TV journalist of the year
Royal Television Society specialist journalist of the year
Royal Television Society interview of the year (for an interview with Bashar al Assad)
3 Bayeux awards (Gaza, Syria and Yemen)
James Cameron Award, Charles Wheeler Award
Was also part of the BBC teams that won: Bafta (Kosovo), International Emmy (2006)
Books :
Six Days: How the 1967 War shaped the Middle East (Simon and Schuster 2003)
War Stories (Simon and Schuster 2005)
The Arab Uprisings: the people want the fall of the regime (Simon and Schuster 2012)