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Fergal Keane

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Fergal Keane
OBE
Keane in May 2016
Born (1961-01-06) 6 January 1961 (age 63)
London, England
EducationPresentation Brothers College, Cork
St Mary's College, Dublin
Terenure College
Occupation(s)Journalist and author
TitleOn Air Editor at BBC News (?–2020)
RelativesJohn B. Keane (uncle)

Fergal Patrick Keane OBE (born 6 January 1961) is an Irish foreign correspondent with BBC News, and an author.[1] For some time, Keane was the BBC's correspondent in South Africa. He is a nephew of the Irish playwright, novelist and essayist John B. Keane.

Early life

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Born in London, England, Keane grew up in Dublin and later in Cork. His father was the Listowel-born actor, Éamonn Keane.[2] His mother is Maura Hassett, a teacher and actress. He attended three primary schools in Dublin: Scoil Bhride, a gaelscoil (Irish-language school), St. Mary's College and Terenure College, and, later, one primary school in Cork, St. Joseph's.[3]

In a 1999 interview with The Independent, Keane said that his Gaelscoil education proved useful in later life: "The grounding in the Irish language I had at Scoil Bhride has never left me. In a foreign country when I'm on the phone and don't wish people to understand what I'm saying, I speak Irish and no Serb listening in is going to crack the code."[3]

His secondary education was at Presentation Brothers College in Cork, where Keane says he was encouraged to join the school debating society, and where he won the Provincial Gold Medal for Public Speaking (on the subject of police brutality in Ireland).[3] Today, Keane continues to draw on this experience acting as a public speaker, event chair and after dinner speaker.[4]

Career

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On finishing school in 1979, Keane started his career as a journalist with the Limerick Leader.[1] Subsequently, he worked for The Irish Press. Later, he moved into broadcast journalism with Radio Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ).[citation needed]

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 1994 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 was named as overall winner of the Amnesty International Press Awards in 1993[5] 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.[6] 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,[7] 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, the Index on Censorship prize for journalistic integrity, and the 1995 Orwell Prize for his book Season of Blood.[8][9] In May 2009 he won a Sony Gold Award for his Radio 4 series Taking A Stand. He also won a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award for his reporting as part of the BBC team covering the 2015 refugee crisis.[10][11] In 2022 Keane and the French Oscar winning director, Alice Doyard, collaborated to make the Ukraine war crimes documentary 'I Call Him By His Name' which one Best Documentary Prize from the Foreign Press Association.

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.[12] Keane was a patron of the UK-based development agency Msaada, which assisted survivors of the Rwandan genocide.[citation needed] He stepped down as a patron of charities he supported in 2009 when the BBC revised its guidelines for all presenters, citing a desire to protect impartiality.

In 2010, he published his first history work, Road of Bones: the Siege of Kohima 1944, an account of the epic battle that halted the Japanese invasion of India in 1944.

One of his projects is the five-part series The Story of Ireland, a 2011 documentary co-produced by BBC Northern Ireland and Raidió Teilifís Éireann.

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. Keane was appointed an OBE for services to journalism in the 1997 New Year's Honours list.

In April 2018, he was awarded the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize for Wounds.[13]

In November 2018, Keane provided the commentary for the Westminster Abbey service marking the centenary of the Armistice.[14]

The BBC revealed in January 2020 that Keane had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for several years, and consequently moved out of his role as Africa editor in order to aid his recovery.[15] In May 2022, he presented a documentary Fergal Keane: Living with PTSD on BBC Two, in which he discussed the impact of PTSD and considered the most recent medical thinking on the condition and its treatment, explaining that his disorder had led him to consider withdrawing from conflict reporting.[16]

In July 2023, he revisited the people and locations from the series Forgotten Britain for a second time in the BBC One programme Brave Britain with Fergal Keane.[17][18] This new documentary was a one-off programme by filmmaker Alice Doyard and featured new footage of Keane in Cornwall, Glasgow and on the Lincoln Green estate in Leeds, with archive footage taken from programmes made in 2000 and 2012. In 2024, Keane was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy.

Published works

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  • Keane, Fergal and Shane Kenny (1987). Irish Politics Now: "This Week" Guide to the 25th Dáil. Brandon. ISBN 0-86322-095-9.
  • Keane, Fergal (1995). The Bondage of Fear: A Journey Through the Last White Empire. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-023488-8.
  • Keane, Fergal (1996). Season of Blood: Rwandan Journey. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-024760-2.
  • Keane, Fergal (1996). Letter to Daniel: Despatches from the Heart. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-026289-X.
  • Keane, Fergal (1999). Letters Home. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-028979-8.
  • Keane, Fergal (1999). Dispatches from the Heart. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-027155-4.
  • Keane, Fergal (2001). A Stranger's Eye (BBC Radio Collection). BBC Audiobooks. ISBN 0-563-47814-4.
  • Keane, Fergal (2006). All of These People: A Memoir. HarperPerennial. ISBN 0-00-717693-7.
  • Keane, Fergal (2010). Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944. HarperPress. ISBN 978-0-00-713240-9.
  • Keane, Fergal (2017). Wounds: A Memoir of Love and War. HarperPress. ISBN 978-0-00-818925-9.
  • Keane, Fergal (2022). The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780008420420.

References

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  1. ^ a b Keane, Fergal (6 October 2014). "Fergal Keane: Early days at the Leader made me the journalist I am". Limerick Leader. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  2. ^ The Irish Times, "A journalist with his own story to tell", 4 January 1997
  3. ^ a b c "Passed/Failed: Fergal Keane – Profiles – People". The Independent. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  4. ^ "Fergal Keane – Personally Speaking Bureau". Personallyspeakingbureau.com. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  5. ^ "Lecture: BBC Foreign Correspondent Fergal Keane Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences". Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  6. ^ Fergal Keane (27 January 1998). "Letter to Daniel". From Our Own Correspondent. BBC. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
  7. ^ "PBS Online NewsHour: Fergal Keane". Pbs.org. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  8. ^ Pfanner, Toni (December 2005). "Interview with Fergal Keane, Special Correspondent for BBC News" (PDF). International Review of the Red Cross. 87 (860). Retrieved 28 October 2014.
  9. ^ "Fergal Keane - BBC Migrant Crisis - 2015 Peabody Award Acceptance Speech". Peabody Awards. 25 July 2016. Retrieved 31 May 2024 – via YouTube.
  10. ^ "BBC World News honored with an Emmy award at the 37th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards" (Press release). BBC Media Centre. 22 September 2016. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
  11. ^ "Fergal Keane's Forgotten Britain". dfgdocs.com. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.
  12. ^ "The 2015 – 2017 Prize – Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize". Ewartbiggsprize.org.uk. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  13. ^ "BBC One – World War One Remembered: Westminster Abbey". BBC. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  14. ^ Topping, Alexandra (14 January 2020). "BBC's Fergal Keane to step down after revealing he has PTSD | Veteran war reporter will leave role as broadcaster's Africa correspondent to aid recovery". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  15. ^ "BBC Two - Fergal Keane: Living with PTSD". BBC.
  16. ^ "Brave Britain with Fergal Keane". BBC iPlayer. 11 July 2023.
  17. ^ "BBC One - Brave Britain with Fergal Keane". July 2023.
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