Orla Guerin

Orla Guerin
Born	(1966-05-15) 15 May 1966 Dublin, Ireland
Occupation(s)	Journalist, presenter
Notable credit	BBC News

Orla Guerin MBE (born 15 May 1966 in Dublin) is an Irish journalist. She is a BBC Africa correspondent and was previously Middle East correspondent. She has extensive experience, having reported from many areas including the West Coast of the USA, Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia, the Basque Country in northern Spain, and Moscow, where she covered the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000.

A journalism graduate from Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Guerin qualified as a journalist in 1985 with a Certificate in Journalism from the College of Commerce in Dublin. She also holds a Master's degree in Film Studies from University College Dublin (UCD).

Guerin first came to attention as a journalist and foreign correspondent with RTÉ News. Guerin joined Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) in 1987 and was their correspondent in Eastern Europe from 1990–1994, travelling widely and reporting from Eastern and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Sarajevo. Guerin's reports from Eastern Europe for RTÉ Radio won her a Jacob's Award in 1992.

She left RTÉ to run as a Labour Party candidate in the 1994 elections to the European parliament. A political novice, Guerin had been hand-picked by then Labour Party leader Dick Spring. Even though she was not selected at the party convention, Spring insisted that she be added to the ballot. Vilified as a "parachute" candidate, she did not win a seat (although she did poll relatively well). She joined the BBC in 1995.

She was removed by BBC director general Mark Thompson as the BBC's Middle East correspondent after a 2005 trip to Israel, and became the corporation's Africa correspondent, based in Johannesburg in 2006.

In 2003, Guerin married Reuters correspondent Michael Georgy. That same year she was awarded the News and Factual Award by Women in Film and Television UK.

Accusation of bias

In 2004, the Israeli government wrote to the BBC accusing Guerin of a "deep-seated bias against Israel" in a report on a teenage would-be suicide bomber. A year later the Muslim Council of Britain accused the BBC as a whole of pro-Israeli bias. Guerin remained as the BBC's Middle East correspondent until January 2006, when she became the Africa correspondent. She was replaced in the Middle East by BBC veteran Jeremy Bowen who announced that he would only refer to Israel and the Palestinians rather than Israel and Palestine. Former Director General of the BBC Greg Dyke wrote: "I have no doubt that the decision by the BBC to pull their Middle East correspondent Orla Guerin out of the region and send her to South Africa was part of the normal rotation of BBC news correspondents around the world. However it was pretty bad timing to announce it within days of Director General Mark Thompson's visit to Israel where he had a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon".

Honours

In 2002, she was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Essex, England and won the Broadcaster of the Year Award from the London Press Club. She was awarded an MBE (Hons) for services to broadcasting. In 2009, she was awarded honorary degrees from both of Northern Ireland's universities, Queen's University Belfast and the University of Ulster.

External links

• BBC press office profile of Orla Guerin Retrieved 2011-11-21