Steve Rosenberg (journalist)

Rosenberg grew up in Chingford, North London. He is Jewish.[2] In 1894 his great grandfather Haim Gnessin left the Russian Empire on a passport Rosenberg still has.[3] Following A-levels at Chingford Senior High, he attended the University of Leeds. In 1991 he achieved a first class degree in Russian Studies. After graduating, in August 1991 Rosenberg moved to Moscow and spent the next 15 years in the Russian capital.

During summer holidays at senior school, he worked at the BBC's teletext service Ceefax.

After moving to Moscow in 1991 to teach English in the Moscow State Technological University STANKIN, Rosenberg secured work with CBS News in the network's Moscow bureau. He spent the next six years at CBS, working first as a translator, then assistant producer, and then producer. Between 1994 and 1996 he was part of the CBS crew covering the first war in Chechnya.

In 1997, Rosenberg became a producer in the BBC's Moscow bureau. In 2000, he was appointed reporter for the BBC in Moscow. Three years later, he became Moscow correspondent. Among the stories he covered in that period was the Kursk submarine disaster (2000),[4] the Nord Ost Theatre siege (2002)[5] and the aftermath of the Beslan school attack (2004).[6] In 2003 he interviewed Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.[7]

Between 2006 and 2010, Rosenberg was the BBC Berlin correspondent, covering stories in Germany and across Europe. In 2010 he returned to Russia for a second stint as Moscow correspondent.[8][9]

As a Eurovision Song Contest fan, Rosenberg covered the contest staged in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2012, where he demonstrated his piano playing skills when appearing on the Ken Bruce show the morning before the 2012 event. He played a short excerpt from every Eurovision winning song. Later in the show, he took part in a "Eurovision Popmaster", narrowly losing the competition to the author of The Eurovision Song Contest - The Official History, John Kennedy O'Connor.

Rosenberg played the piano to former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev after an interview.[10]

In June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rosenberg and BBC North West Tonight weather presenter and drummer Owain Wyn Evans joined to present the Match of the Day theme.

In 2015, the government of Ukraine issued a decree banning several journalists, including Rosenberg, from entering the country over his coverage of the war in Donbass. The decree stated those banned were a "threat to national interests" or engaged in promoting "terrorist activities". The BBC labelled the ban "a shameful attack on media freedom".[11] The Ukrainians retracted the ban just a day later.[12]