Richard Sambrook
Richard Sambrook (born 24 April 1956) is Global Vice Chairman and Chief Content Officer of the Edelman public relations agency. For 30 years, until February 2010, he was a BBC journalist and news executive, becoming successively Director of BBC Sport, BBC News and, latterly, Director of BBC World Service and Global News.
Sambrook was educated at Maidstone Technical High School, at the University of Reading (BA in English) and at Birkbeck College, University of London (MSc in politics). His career began in local newspapers in South Wales. He joined BBC Radio News as a sub-editor in 1980.
His time at the BBC was almost entirely in daily news. He was a programme editor, news editor and, later, Head of Newsgathering when the Corporation won a number of awards for its international news coverage. He merged radio and television news, and domestic and World Service newsgathering during this time, resulting in the world's largest broadcast news operation. He was acting Director of Sport in 2000, and became Director of News in 2001.
Sambrook defended in June/July 2003 what became the highly controversial Today programme report that the Blair government had in its September Dossier knowingly exaggerated claims relating to Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction. On 20 July he confirmed that Dr David Kelly had been the source of the news item. He later gave evidence to the Hutton Inquiry into Kelly's apparent suicide.
Sambrook became Director of the World Service and Global News in September 2004. He oversaw major restructuring of the World Service, and its opening of Arabic and Persian television, as well as commercial interactive services.
Since January 2010 he has been a Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
From 2006-2009 he was Vice President of the European Broadcasting Union and represented public broadcasters on the advisory group to the UN's Internet Governance Forum . He was a member of the leadership committee of the Global Media AIDS Initiative, established by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2004. He was Chairman of the BBC's international charity, the World Service Trust, and Chairman of the Arts and Business Advisory Council.
He was on the advisory board of the British Council, the executive committee of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and the board of the Fritz Institute. He led an inquiry for the International News Safety Institute into the deaths of journalists around the world. He is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society and of the Royal Society of Arts.
Sambrook is married with two children.
[edit] External links
- Are Foreign Correspondents Redundant? (Reuters Institute)
- Sambrook questioned by fellow journalists at London's Frontline Club, February 2010
- BBC press office biography
- Killing The Messenger report for INSI
- Interview in the Guardian
- Columbia University Poliak Lecture , 2005
- The case against censorship, 2005
- Hypergene interview on media and participation
- Interview by Ray Snoddy, the Independent
- Survival Strategies for Public Broadcasters, 2005
