Matt Frei

Matthias "Matt" Frei (born 26 November 1963) is a British-German television news journalist and writer, formerly the Washington, D.C. correspondent for Channel 4 News. He is now the channel's Europe editor and presenter of the evening news.[1]

Not to be confused with Matt Fry.

Matt Frei
Frei in 2015
Born
Matthias Frei

(1963-11-26) 26 November 1963
Essen, West Germany
Other namesMatt Frei
EducationWestminster School
St Peter's College, Oxford
OccupationJournalist, newsreader, news anchor, author
Notable credit(s)
ITN, BBC News
Children4

Personal life

Frei was born in 1963 in Essen, West Germany.[2] His parents were refugees who left Silesia before it became part of Poland, and settled in Germany.[3] In 1973, Frei and his family left Germany and moved to the United Kingdom, where his father became a London correspondent for Deutschlandfunk.[3]

Frei was educated at Westminster School, then read history and Spanish at St Peter's College, University of Oxford, before graduating in 1986.

Frei lives in London with his wife Penny and their four children.[3]

Career

BBC

Frei joined the BBC and spent a year in the German section of the World Service, before he moved to English language current affairs, where he worked for another year.

In 1989, working as a stringer, he reported on the First Intifada in Jerusalem, then on the Persian Gulf War as London foreign affairs correspondent. He took up the post of Bonn correspondent in Germany on the same day as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 1990, Frei took a holiday in Zimbabwe and persuaded aid worker friend Katty Kay to become a journalist.[4]

From 1992 to 1996, he worked as Southern Europe correspondent, based in Rome, and covered events in Bosnia, Kosovo, North Africa and various Mafia-related stories.[5]

After working as Southern Europe correspondent, he worked as Asia correspondent from 1997 to 2003, based in Hong Kong (taking up his post just before the handover to China) and later in Singapore.[6]

From 2002, he was the BBC's Washington, DC correspondent. In 2005, Frei reported from the centre of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. On 1 October 2007, Frei became the first presenter of the BBC World News one-hour Washington-based news broadcast, BBC World News America, supported by correspondent Katty Kay.

For a week in July 2008, Frei presented the London-based BBC News at Six on a relief basis. A year later on 27 July 2009, Frei returned to London again to present the evening bulletin (again as a relief presenter). In January 2011, Frei presented the BBCs Newsnight as a relief presenter.

Frei presented his own BBC documentary on the life and times of the German capital, Berlin. It ran from 14 November 2009.[7]

As part of his brief as the BBC's Washington correspondent, Frei presented a weekly Radio 4 programme entitled Americana, which offers listeners slices of life in all of the country's 50 states as well as political news from Washington. Frei's last Americana episode was broadcast in May 2011.[1]

Channel 4

It was announced in May 2011 that Frei would be switching from the BBC to Channel 4 later in the year. Frei would serve as the broadcaster's Washington correspondent for Channel 4 News, as well as reporting for the channel's other news programmes.[1] He has since returned often from Washington and has become a semi-regular presenter on Channel 4's evening news slot.

In October 2012, Frei headed Channel 4's coverage of the US Presidential election, including making a documentary "The American Road Trip: Obama's story" in which he visited middle-class voters in communities in the mid-west, including Minneapolis, Northwood, Ohio and Gary, Indiana.[8]

LBC

On 24 September 2016, he started presenting the 10:00 am show, occasional Saturdays on LBC radio.

Awards
  • International Emmy for News, for Channel 4 News reports, ‘Hong Kong: Year of Living Dangerously’, (2020)
  • RTS Journalist of the Year
  • (2015 and 2017)
  • Voice of the Listener and Viewer Award (2018)
  • Dupont Award for Haiti Earthquake (2011)
  • Royal Television Society International News Award (2000)
  • Prix Bayeux for War Reporting (2000)
  • Peabody Award for BBC World News America (2010)
  • Amnesty International Asia Award, for Newsnight features on Vietnam and Indonesia (1997 and 1998)

Books
  • Italy: The Unfinished Revolution (1995). Sinclair-Stevenson. ISBN 978-1-85619-571-3.
  • Only in America (2008). HarperCollins Publishers Limited. ISBN 978-0-00-724892-6.

References
  1. "BBC's Matt Frei switches to Channel 4". The Spy Report. Media Spy. 20 May 2011. Archived from the original on 23 May 2011. Retrieved 20 May 2011.
  2. "When In Rome". Scotsman.com. 13 August 2008.
  3. First Person, 17 January 2009, The Guardian. Retrieved on 24 November 2009.
  4. "She said... Katty Kay". BBC World Service. Archived from the original on 11 December 2007. Retrieved 5 January 2008.
  5. Downing, Malcolm. (2003). The battle for Iraq: BBC news correspondents on the war against Saddam. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-7936-4.
  6. Matt Frei, BBC Newswatch profile
  7. Berlin Open2.net
  8. "The American Road Trip: Obama's story". Channel 4.
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