Jim Muir | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1948-06-03)3 June 1948 (age 77) Farnborough,Hampshire, England |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Notable credit | BBC News |
Jim Muir (born 3 June 1948) is a British journalist, currently serving as aMiddle East correspondent forBBC News, based inBeirut, Lebanon.[1]
Muir is ofScottish heritage, but was born inFarnborough, Hampshire, inEngland in 1948, and was educated atSedbergh School inSedbergh, then in theWest Riding of Yorkshire, before going on to study Oriental Studies (Arabic) atSidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he graduated with afirst class honours degree in 1969.[2][3]
Muir worked atFrank Cass & Co, a specialist international politics academic publishing company,[4] inLondon between 1970 and 1974. He drove to Beirut afterChristmas 1974, assuming Lebanon to be a safe haven in the turbulent Arab world. However, not long after arriving, a devastating15-year civil war broke out. Muir was the Beirut correspondent for theInter Press Service between 1975 and 1978, and then became a freelance correspondent for theBBC,The Sunday Times,The Daily Telegraph,The Christian Science Monitor andNational Public Radio, among others. In 1980, he had to relocate toCyprus and make periodic visits to Lebanon after being put on aSyrianhitlist. He is thought to be "the only western correspondent to cover the [civil war] from start to finish".[2]
Muir said of Lebanon: "They used to say Lebanon was the country where you could ski in the morning and swim in the afternoon, but after one particular trip to the South, I remember thinking it should be billed as the country where you could get shot at by the Israelis in the morning, shelled by right-wing Christians at lunchtime, and kidnapped by Islamic fanatics in the afternoon."[2] Muir was the Lebanon correspondent forMiddle East International.
As Lebanon's civil war died down, theGulf War started. Muir monitoringBaghdad radio and provided news on the scene. OnceDesert Storm had driven theIraqis out ofKuwait, he went to northern Iraq to join theKurds as they rose up againstSaddam Hussein. Muir spent time embedded with the KurdishPesh Merga army as they defended themselves against the Iraqi central government. At this time, Muir had little contact with the outside world: "I had to shout my despatches down a tenuous walkie-talkie link to offices inDamascus which recorded them and passed them on to London. If they got through, the quality was so bad that they had to be voiced-over as though in a foreign language."[2]
Muir continued to cover Lebanon and the wider Middle East, as well asAfghanistan andBosnia between 1993 and 1994.[1] Muir became a Middle East correspondent for BBC News based inCairo, Egypt, between 1995 and 1999, inTehran, Iran, between 1999 and 2004, and he returned to Beirut in 2004. He has been a lead reporter on various stories, including the election ofMohammad Khatami asPresident of Iran, theAlgerian Civil War, and most recently, the2014 Northern Iraq offensive.[5] In 2010, Muir received the MBI Lifetime Achievement Award at theInternational Media Awards.[6]
