Karin Giannone

Giannone was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She moved with her family to the United Kingdom when she was aged two. She was brought up in Edinburgh, Sussex and Kent.

Giannone was educated at Moira House School, an independent school for girls in Eastbourne in Sussex, George Watson's College, a co-educational independent school in Edinburgh, and Cranbrook School, a co-educational state grammar school in Kent, followed by Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied Modern Languages, and graduated with a first class honours degree. She speaks French, German and Italian. She was the editor of Cambridge University’s Varsity student newspaper in 1994–95.

Giannone edited the student magazine Varsity magazine at Cambridge, which led to work experience at Anglia Television and on graduation in 1997 she joined the regional ITV station in Norwich as a news trainee, producing, reporting and presenting for regional news bulletins. In 1999 her language and broadcasting skills helped her land a role as a reporter and presenter for Channel 4’s Football Italia series, where she covered the Italian Soccer scene for a season, flying between the UK and Italy every week. She returned to Anglia in 2000 as a presenter and reporter, this time for the programme for the east of the region covering Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.[1] She also followed troops from the region for a series of reports from Afghanistan in 2002.

Giannone then moved to London to present a variety of shifts for Sky News, before joining BBC News in 2005. Her work assignments have included a stint presenting World News Today on the BBC World News channel from Washington at 10:00 pm EST during July/August 2008.

She presented live coverage from South Africa following the death of Nelson Mandela in 2013.

From 3 March 2014, Giannone presented live coverage on the BBC News Channel at the trial of Oscar Pistorius in Pretoria, South Africa. She anchored the BBC's French presidential election coverage in 2017 from Paris, Italian elections in 2018 from Rome, and the Indian election from Delhi in 2019.

She is now the regular presenter of BBC World News from 0700-1000GMT Wednesdays and Thursdays including WorkLife with Sally Bundock at 830am in the UK, Friday 1600-1900 and Sunday 1800-2200 (including World News Today at 9pm on the BBC News Channel.)

Giannone is divorced and lives in Kent with her three children. [1][2] She has been dating television news director Nick Buckley since 2019.

• Karin Giannone at IMDb