Journalist
Coughlin has spent most of his journalistic career working for what is now the Telegraph Media Group.
As a young reporter based at the Daily Telegraph’s Fleet Street offices he was initially given responsibility for covering a number of major crime stories, such as the arrest of Peter Sutcliffe, the notorious Yorkshire Ripper and the Brixton riots.
Coughlin then became a foreign correspondent. His first big assignment was to cover the American invasion of Grenada in late 1983. From there he was sent to Beirut to cover the Lebanese civil war where he developed his interest in the Middle East and international terrorism. After the Telegraph group was bought in 1985 by the Canadian businessman Conrad Black Coughlin was appointed the Daily Telegraph’s Middle East correspondent by Max Hastings, the newspaper’s new editor.
Coughlin opened the newspaper’s new bureau in Jerusalem, and spent the next three years covering a multitude of stories throughout the region. In April 1986 he narrowly escaped being kidnapped by Hezbollah gunmen in Beirut, the day before another British journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped. In March 2009 Coughlin recalled this experience in a programme for BBC Radio 4, My Alter Ego. In 1989 Coughlin returned to London, where he transferred to the Sunday Telegraph and was appointed the newspaper’s chief foreign correspondent. During the next few years he received several promotions, becoming Foreign Editor in 1997 and Executive Editor in 1999. The following year the Sunday Telegraph won the prestigious “newspaper of the year” award at the British Press Awards.
He was an analyst for CNN during the Iraq war, and also appeared regularly on Fox News, CBS, NBC and ABC. After the war he worked as an analyst for the NBC/MSNBC network. Today he broadcasts regularly on American and British television and radio on a range of international issues, especially in relation to Afghanistan, the Middle East, defence and global security.
In 2006 Coughlin rejoined the Daily Telegraph as the newspaper’s Defence and Security Editor after a brief spell writing for the Daily Mail, and later that year was promoted Executive Foreign Editor. He writes a weekly column, Inside Abroad, and comments on a broad range of subjects, with a special interest in defence and security issues, the Middle East and international terrorism.
He now maintains a blog on the Daily Telegraph's website.
Read more about this topic: Con Coughlin
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