Fergal Keane - Career

Career

On finishing school in 1979, Keane started his career as a journalist with the Limerick Leader. Subsequently, he worked for The Irish Press. Later, he moved into broadcast journalism with Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ).

Keane joined the BBC in 1989 as Northern Ireland Correspondent, but in August 1990 he was appointed their Southern African Correspondent, having covered the region during the early 1980s. From 1990 to 1994 Keane's reports covered the township unrest in South Africa, the first multi-racial elections following the end of apartheid, and the genocide in Rwanda. In 1995 he was appointed Asia Correspondent based in Hong Kong and two years later, after the handover, he returned to be based in the BBC's World Affairs Unit in London.

Keane's reporting has attracted widespread critical acclaim. He was named as overall winner of the Amnesty International Press Awards in 1993 and won an Amnesty television prize in 1994 for his investigation of the Rwandan genocide, Journey Into Darkness. He is the only journalist to have won both the Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year award and the Sony Radio Reporter of the Year in the same year – 1994. He won The Voice of The Viewer award and a Listener Award for his 1996 BBC Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent despatch Letter to Daniel, addressed to his newborn son, and a One World Television Award in 1999. He won a BAFTA award for his documentary on Rwanda, Valentina's Story. He has won the James Cameron Prize for war reporting, the Edward R. Murrow Award for foreign reporting and the 1995 Orwell Prize for his book Season of Blood. In May 2009 he won a Sony Gold Award for his Radio 4 series Taking A Stand.

In the three-part documentary Forgotten Britain, serialised on the BBC in May 2000, Keane travelled across the country meeting people living on the edge in affluent societies. He visits and interviews residents living on a drug-infested housing estate in Leeds, interviews a Govan shipyard worker faced with the constant threat of redundancy and travels through the idyllic landscapes of Cornwall and Wales interviewing independent dairy farmers who claim they are being ruined by competing supermarket chains.

In 2005, Keane helped to found the UK-based Third World development agency Msaada, which assists survivors of the Rwandan genocide.

Keane has been awarded honorary degrees in literature from the University of Strathclyde, Bournemouth University and Staffordshire University. On 15 December 2011, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Liverpool. In 1996 he was awarded an OBE for services to journalism. Among his latest projects is the five-part series The Story of Ireland, a 2011 documentary co-produced by BBC Northern Ireland and Raidió Teilifís Éireann.