Phil Rees

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Phil Rees (born 1959) is a controversial British award-winning reporter and documentary film maker. His latest and most controversial documentary is Dispatches: "Britain Under Attack", which gave voice to 'Terrorists' and their reasons for attacking the UK in the name of Islam.

He is praised by many in that he lets the extremists themselves tell their side of the story as to why they do things, as opposed to the Government line dictating their reasons.

1 Background
2 Written works
3 Documentary films
4 Notes and references
5 External links

[edit] Background

Rees graduated from Oxford University in 1982. In the same year, he joined the BBC as a trainee journalist and began his career as a reporter on television news in Northern Ireland.

Phil Rees made nearly forty documentaries for the BBC and is now reporting for Dispatches on Channel 4. He has reported for the BBC's flagship current affairs show, Newsnight, the Nine O’Clock News, the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He’s presented programmes on BBC World, World Service Radio and the Islam Channel.

He has won more than a dozen international awards, including two from the Royal Television Society for best foreign affairs documentary (1994 & 1998). From 1986 - 2002, Rees covered Asia, the Middle East, South and Central America for the BBC’s news and current affairs’ department.

He remains the only western journalist to have travelled and filmed with Algeria’s Islamic militants. His 1994 film, Algeria’s Hidden War, revealed the scale of a conflict that claimed 200,000 lives and was rarely glimpsed by the outside world.

Rees won the Silver Nymph at the 1998 Monte Carlo Television Festival for his reporting on the war in Kashmir. With unique access to the armies of both India and Pakistan, The Unfinished War told the story of a conflict that has continued for half century between two nations that are now nuclear powers.

His reporting on the war in Kosovo in 1998 won him the Prix Bayeux Des Correspondents de Guerre award. His film, The Serbs’ Last Stand, won that year’s Royal Television Society award. Sloba and Mira, a profile of Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, made just before war broke out in Europe, was described by the Financial Times as “excellent” and short listed for an RTS.

Rees covered extensively the conflict in Afghanistan during the late 1980s and 90s. He filmed frontline fighting with both the Soviet backed regime in Kabul and the mujahedeen guerrillas. In November 2001, he was with the group of BBC journalists who were the first to enter Kabul when the Taliban fled. He reported on the war in Cambodia from 1988 onwards. In 1997, he made a film on the country’s strongman, Hun Sen for the Correspondent series. He later gained the first television interview with Pol Pot’s deputy, Nuon Chea.

Rees has also worked as series producer for Planet Islam, which was described by The Independent as "foreign affairs journalism at its best",^{[citation needed]} and for Druglands, a candid portrayal of drug usage in Britain. Rees reported and produced the first in the series on cocaine dealers in London. His other recent documentaries include the Secret Life of the Office Cleaner, an exposé of the cleaning industry’s dependence on illegal labour and Who Needs the Union Jack? - a BBC2 documentary examining whether we really need a British flag when the English now see the Flag of St George as their national banner and the Welsh and Scottish mostly ignore the Union Jack.

His first book, Dining with Terrorists, a critique of the ‘war on terror’, was published by Macmillan in March 2005 and described by The Guardian as "an outstanding book…the vivid writing links his interviews with smiling killers into a kind of globe-trotting adventure story, as readable as it is informative."^{[citation needed]} According to The British Journalism Review "This thoughtful, controversial book should be compulsory reading for every editor, journalist and politician – before it is too late."^{[citation needed]} Noam Chomsky described it as "an amazing tour de force".^{[citation needed]}

His reports have aired on the Nine O’Clock News, the Today programme as well as BBC World. Rees recently completed a reporting stint on Newsnight: during the week of transmission, his report on an endangered Amazonian tribe received the second highest number of hits for audio/visual stories on the BBC’s website at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/films/5015750.stm.

Rees has also written for the New Statesman, The Sunday Times, Independent, Guardian and numerous other publications. He regularly appears as an analyst on Middle East affairs for Al Jazeera (Arabic), Al Arabiya and The Islam Channel.

He currently lives in London and is preparing his second book.