Benjamin Hall (journalist)

Hall began his career as a journalist focusing on the Middle East. Since 2007, he has written from the frontlines for The New York Times, The Times of London and The Sunday Times, The Independent, The BBC, and other outlets, often as one of the first journalists on the ground.[2][3]

Over the last few years, Hall has travelled to Syria and Iraq repeatedly filing dispatches for BBC radio, Agence France Presse, Playboy, Vice News and the aforementioned publications — often from behind enemy lines and embedded with rebel and regime troops.[4]

Hall smuggled himself into Misrata, Libya during the height of the siege, and reported for Esquire Magazine, Channel 4 News, and others regarding Muammar Qaddafi’s indiscriminate shelling of the local population. In 2014 he embedded with UN troops during the siege of the Mogadishu parliament, writing for The Times…and has also reported from Egypt, Haiti, and Iran. He has been a jury member of the London Kurdish film festival.[5]

Hall grew up in London, as a dual citizen, holding both US and UK passports. He studied at Ampleforth College, City of London School, and Duke University, and received a BA from Richmond, The American International University in London. He received a post graduate diploma in television journalism from the University of the Arts, London. He has previously worked in the offices of the vice president of Columbia Pictures in Los Angeles and the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson in Washington, D.C.