Mark Seddon | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1962-10-07)7 October 1962 (age 62) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, academic |
Mark Anthony Paul Seddon (born 7 October 1962) is the Director of the Centre for United Nations Studies at theUniversity of Buckingham, UK, which was officially opened in September 2019 and offers an MA Degree in UN & Diplomatic Studies. He was Media Adviser toMaria Fernanda Espinosa, thePresident of the United Nations General Assembly. He has worked as editor ofTribune, United Nations & Diplomatic Correspondent forAl Jazeera English, speechwriter to theSecretary-General of the United Nations,Ban Ki-moon, and Director of Communications for theInternational Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity, which was chaired by UN Special Envoy for Global Education and former UK Prime Minister, Rt. Hon.Gordon Brown. He has also been an activist and parliamentary candidate with theLabour Party, and served on theNational Executive Committee, the National Policy Forum and the Economic Policy Commission, chaired byGordon Brown.
The son of aBritish army officer, Seddon went toDauntsey's School, an independent co-educational boarding school in the village ofWest Lavington in Wiltshire. He studiedDevelopment Studies at theUniversity of East Anglia. Seddon's family home is inBuckinghamshire, England.
Seddon has written forThe New York Times andThe Boston Globe. He has been a diarist for the LondonEvening Standard and has contributed to newspapers such asThe Guardian,The Independent,The Times, theDaily Mail, andThe National (Abu Dhabi), as well asNew Statesman,Private Eye,The Oldie,Country Life, and the websiteBig Think (New York). Also a prolific writer forTribune, he served as that magazine's editor from 1993 until 2004.
On television, Seddon has reported for theBBC from insideIraq,North Korea andChina, as well as forSky News from Yemen and for Al Jazeera English from North Korea,Syria,Democratic Republic of Congo,Kenya,Ethiopia andHaiti. Seddon also reported regularly from the United Nations and from the White House, and has lectured widely in North America and the UK. He became the United Nations and New York City correspondent for Al Jazeera English in 2005, having helped set up and run the first ever Al Jazeera English TV New York Bureau.[1] He later returned to the UK to continue as Al Jazeera English TV's Diplomatic Correspondent. He was an early guest onHave I Got News for You, and has appeared as a commentator on numerous UK and US television and radio programmes, includingNewsnight,Channel 4 News,Breakfast with Frost,The Politics Show and theToday programme.
In 2003, Seddon was the first journalist to reveal that "extraordinary rendition" had taken place in theBritish Indian Ocean Territory island ofDiego Garcia. He repeated the claims for Al Jazeera English TV, shortly before the thenForeign Secretary,David Miliband, admitted that extraordinary rendition had indeed taken place on the island of Diego Garcia. Seddon was also the first foreign reporter to broadcast live fromPyongyang, the North Korean capital, in 2006, soon after performing the first trans Atlantic 'live' from the United Nations in New York toDoha for Al Jazeera English TV at the time of that Networks' launch. He is a former Vice President of theUnited Nations Correspondents Association and is currently a member of the Board of the Foreign Press Association (New York).
From 2014 to 2016, Seddon worked in the Communications and Speechwriting Unit for theSecretary-General of the United Nations,Ban Ki-moon. He subsequently became Director of Communications for theInternational Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity, chaired by UN Special Envoy for Global Education and former UK Prime Minister,Gordon Brown. In September 2017 he became an adjunct professor in International Relations atColumbia University, New York, in theHarriman Institute.[2] He returned to New York in August 2018, to work as Media Adviser to the President of the UN General Assembly, 73rd Session at UN Headquarters.
Active in theLabour Party, Seddon worked forGordon Brown during the1992 general election. After Brown becameChancellor of the Exchequer, Seddon served for five years on the Chancellor's Economic Policy Commission. Seddon was elected to Labour'sNational Executive Committee as aGrassroots Alliance candidate in 1997, gaining the highest share of the vote. Re-elected several times, he remained an NEC member until standing down in 2005. In the2001 General Election, Seddon ran for parliament in the safeConservative seat ofBuckingham, against future SpeakerJohn Bercow.
In 2002, he was controversially removed from the shortlist to be Labour's candidate in theOgmore by-election.[3][4] Seddon was a vocal critic of many aspects of the last Labour government in the UK, particularly over the2003 Invasion of Iraq. He also opposed Britain's involvement in thewar in Afghanistan from the outset. He backedMayor of LondonKen Livingstone's ultimately successful attempt to be readmitted to the Labour Party. In 2011 he published an autobiography,Standing for Something – Life in the Awkward Squad about his time as a dissenter withinNew Labour and as a foreign TV reporter.
After leaving the Labour Party NEC in 2005, he became the United Nations and New York City correspondent forAl Jazeera English,[1] before returning to the UK to continue as Al Jazeera English TV's Diplomatic Correspondent.In 2011 he became the media advisor andspeechwriter for thedirectly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets,Lutfur Rahman.[5]
Seddon has campaigned for justice for theChagossians of theBritish Indian Ocean Territory for 30 years. He was active in the campaign for new elections in theMaldives, following the toppling of that country's first democratic President,Mohamed Nasheed in a coup in 2012. Nasheed was an old school friend, and Seddon had backed his long campaign for democracy in the Maldives.
| Media offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Editor ofTribune 1993–2004 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
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| National | |
