Abstract
The BBC's Allan Little was this year's winner of the Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcast Journalism, presented at the fourth media conference to be co-hosted by the BJR and the University of Westminster.
He received the award from Lady Wheeler, widow of the late BBC foreign correspondent.
Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News, said: “It's a rare journalist who can effortlessly combine hard facts with empathy, insight and moral authority. Charles Wheeler was one such reporter; Allan is another. We are very proud of him.”
Previous winners have been Jeremy Paxman, Jeremy Bowen and Lindsey Hilsum. Little, a graduate of Edinburgh University, joined BBC Scotland in 1983 as a news and current affairs researcher and then trained as a radio reporter in London. After a spell with Radio Solent he joined the Today programme, where he specialised in foreign reporting, and then BBC News, for which he reported from Baghdad during the first Gulf War and from Kuwait after it, covering the Shia rebellions.
From 1991 to 1995 he reported the break-up of Yugoslavia and then moved to Johannesburg to begin a two-year stint as South Africa correspondent, covering the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda and the overthrow of President Mobutu in Zaire. His career progressed at the highest level, presenting on the Today programme before being posted to Moscow, where he reported on the economic upheaval of the Yeltsin regime and the devastating earthquakes in Afghanistan. He was then BBC correspondent in Africa and Paris, and is now a BBC special correspondent and presenter based in London.
The presentation was followed by a question and answer session with the Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, conducted by the then BJR editor Bill Hagerty on a range of subjects, ranging from phone hacking through the Leveson Inquiry to the future of print journalism. The evening concluded with a reception at which Rusbridger, Little and London Mayor Boris Johnson, son-in-law of the late Charles Wheeler, mingled with journalism students.
The conference, entitled “After phone hacking, what next?”, was held at the University's Regent Street, London, campus on May 29 and 30 and attracted media academics and journalists from the UK and abroad.