David Blair (journalist)

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David Blair is the Diplomatic Editor of The Daily Telegraph.

He began working for the Daily Telegraph in Zimbabwe in 1999. He was forced to leave the country by President Robert Mugabe's regime in June 2001. Blair later published a book about his experiences called "Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe". He was named Young Journalist of the Year by the Foreign Press Association for his coverage of Zimbabwe.

Thereafter, he was based in Pakistan (2002 - 2003) and the Middle East (2003 - 2004). He was among the first journalists to enter Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank after the bitterly controversial Israeli assault in April 2002. Blair's front page report on the Palestinian suffering caused by this attack, headlined "Blasted to Rubble by the Israelis",^[1] attracted considerable attention as the Daily Telegraph had always been perceived as favourable to Israel.

Blair reported extensively from Iraq before and after the American-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. At the height of the looting in Baghdad in April 2003, Blair entered Saddam Hussein's old foreign ministry and found documents purporting to show that George Galloway, the British MP, had received money from the deposed regime. Galloway vigorously denied this charge and sued the Daily Telegraph for libel. Galloway won the case in November 2004 and the newspaper paid him damages of £150,000. The Daily Telegraph did not attempt to claim justification (a defence in which the defendant bears the onus of proving that the defamatory reports are true): "It has never been the Telegraph's case to suggest that the allegations contained in these documents are true".^[2] Instead, the paper sought to argue that it acted responsibly because the allegations it reported were of sufficient public interest to outweigh the damage caused to Galloway's reputation.

On July 17 2007, the Parliamentary Standards Committee published its report after investigating Blair's stories about Galloway for the best part of four years. They concluded that the documents he found were genuine. They upheld his account of how he had found them in the foreign ministry. Crucially, the committee of MPs found that Galloway had taken money from Saddam's regime for his campaign against the sanctions then imposed on Iraq. They recommended that Galloway apologise for his actions to Parliament - and apologise personally to Blair. They also recommended that he be suspended from Parliament for one calendar month, during which he will be banned from the Palace of Westminster - including his own parliamentary office - and be unable to draw a salary or speak or vote in the House of Commons.

Blair became the Daily Telegraph's Africa Bureau Chief in June 2004. He reported on the war in Darfur, the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the war in Northern Uganda. He left this job some time in late 2006.

Although born in Africa, Blair is a British citizen. He is not related to the British prime minister, Tony Blair.^[3]