| Richard Engel | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 16, 1973 |
| Education | Stanford University |
| Occupation | Correspondent |
| Title | NBC News Chief foreign correspondent |
| NBC News Biography Official website | |
Richard Engel (born September 16, 1973) is an American television journalist and author best known as NBC News's chief foreign correspondent.[1] He was assigned to that position on April 18, 2008 from being the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut Bureau chief. Engel was the first broadcast journalist recipient of the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for his report "War Zone Diary."[2]
Prior to joining NBC News in May 2003, he covered the start of the 2003 war in Iraq from Baghdad for ABC News as a freelance journalist. He speaks and reads Arabic fluently and is also fluent in Italian and Spanish. Engel wrote the book A Fist in the Hornet's Nest, published in 2004, about his experience covering the Iraq War from Baghdad. His newest book, War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq, published in June 2008, picks up where his last book left off.
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Engel grew up on the Upper East Side of New York City. He has an older brother who is a cardiologist.[3] His father, a former Goldman Sachs financier, and mother Nina, who ran an antiques store, feared for their son's future prospects because of his dyslexia.[4] Engel attended the Riverdale Country School and Stanford University, graduating in 1996 with a B.A. in International Relations.[5]
After graduating from Stanford, Engel left for Cairo, Egypt, because he felt that the region was where the next story would be. He first lived in a ramshackle seven-story walk-up, learned the Egyptian dialect of Arabic and worked as a freelance reporter out of Cairo for four years. Next he moved to Jerusalem, continuing his freelance reporting for three more years until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (where he has been predominantly since). He was offered a position as a foreign correspondent with NBC.[6]
He filed a number of reports from Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. In mid-May 2008, Engel interviewed U.S. President George W. Bush, largely about his then recent speech to the Israeli Knesset. Engel was stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2008 covering the country's presidential election. More recently, in 2011, Engel reported from Egypt [7] and Libya during the mass protests in those countries.
A winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award, on May 18, 2009, Engel won the Peabody Award for his reports covering U.S. Army Viper Company fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. Engel's work on "War Zone Diary," a documentary about life in Iraq, earned him the Medill Medal for Courage in 2007. On March 30, 2011, Richard Engel was honored with the David Bloom award for his outstanding service to journalism. The award was presented by Mr. Bloom's daughter. Engel was on assignment covering the 2011 Libyan civil war.
Engel was married to a woman whom he met at Stanford. They divorced in 2005.[8] Engel is a Jewish American.[9]
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