Fergal Keane Biography
Fergal Keane is a media personality serving as a Foreign Correspondent for BBC News. He is also a writer. Previously, he covered South Africa and Asia for BBC. He was also appointed Africa editor.
Fergal Keane Age
He was born on January 6, 1961, in London, United Kingdom.
Fergal Keane Height
He is 5 feet 5 inches tall (166cm).
Fergal Keane Nationality
Keane is Irish by nationality.
Fergal Keane Education
Fergal attended a number of primary schools in Dublin. The first one was Scoil Bhride, a gaelscoil (Irish-language school). In his two years at Scoil Bhride, Fergal had a huge grounding in the politics of the Irish state. He then went to Miss Carr’s, a preparatory school. She was a fine, solid woman. While there, he won his first prize, for his work on King Arthur.
At eight, Fergal went to St Mary’s College. However, his mother, who was very much against corporal punishment, moved him at nine to Terenure College, a marvelous school run by Carmelite (as opposed to Armalite!) brothers.
At 10, Fergal’s family split up and he moved to Cork, his mother’s hometown with her. While there, he attended St Joseph’s, a “national”, a state primary school, very solid academically but very tough.
His secondary education was at Presentation Brothers College in Cork, where Fergal says he was encouraged to join the school debating society, and where he won the Provincial Gold Medal for Public Speaking (on the subject of police brutality in Ireland).
Fergal got six Honours in Intermediate Cert (GCSEs) and five Honours in “Leaving Cert” (A-levels). The plan had been for him to go to college but from the age of 13 he had wanted to write and travel: to be a foreign correspondent. His uncle introduced him to a newspaper owner who offered him a job and he said “Yes” immediately.
Fergal Keane Family
Keane is the eldest of three children. His mother, Maura Hassett, was a language teacher in Cork. He is also the nephew of playwright John B. Keane, from whom many say he inherits his writing flair.
Keane’s father, Eamon Keane, an actor died from a heart attack in 1993 in north Kerry where he was born, his wife having separated permanently from him in 1970. Keane has acknowledged that his fragile childhood left him with insecurity which drove him to “make something” of himself. His father’s alcoholism has also left him with a wary attitude to drink. A few glasses of wine or a few pints are his maxima.
Fergal Keane Wife
Keane married his wife Anne Frances Flaherty in 1986. Anne, a Clare-born is also a journalist. The couple met while working together at The Irish Press in Limerick.
Anne is a freelance journalist and has worked alongside her husband in bringing stories from Hong Kong, South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Vietnam to the world. She is also the editor of ChiswickW4 – a west London website.
Fergal Keane Kids
Fergal and his wife, Anne Frances Flaherty have two children, a 26-year-old Daniel Patrick Keane, and Holly, 19, adopted from an orphanage in southern China in 2005. Daniel was born on February 4, 1996. In 1996, Fergal read a letter to his newborn son on the BBC radio program “From Our Own Correspondent.”
Fergal Keane BBC News
Keane is a Foreign Correspondent for BBC News. He has reported from many of the world’s major trouble spots, from Northern Ireland to Rwanda and Iraq, attracted widespread critical acclaim, and won a string of awards for his
reports. Among many other prizes, he was named Journalist of the Year at the Royal Television Society Awards (1995). He also took the Amnesty International Television Award for his 1994 Panorama report “Journey into Darkness” — an account of the genocide in Rwanda and the Index on Censorship prize for journalistic integrity.
Keane began his journalistic career in 1979 with a job in the Limerick Leader, a start which he has acknowledged was “greatly facilitated” by his uncle John B, a columnist on the paper. He always dreamed of working in television and being a foreign correspondent. His determination to achieve this is evidenced by the directness of his career path from Limerick to the Irish Press, RTE, and the BBC.
From the Irish Press, Keane moved to RTE, working in the Dublin and Belfast newsrooms from 1984 to 1989. “He was always brilliant,” says one former editor. We knew we were looking at someone whom RTE was never going to hold on to.”
Keane joined the BBC in 1989. According to a former colleague, he was originally interviewed for a job as a regional journalist with BBC Northern Ireland but he shone so much in his interview that he was appointed Northern Ireland correspondent for the network service.
While this anecdote sounds apocryphal, Keane so impressed his BBC bosses that within a year, he was appointed South Africa Correspondent. This posting was a homecoming for Keane who had been deeply interested in South Africa since, aged 12, his mother gave him a copy of Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country.
For the next four years, he covered the township unrest in South Africa, the first multiracial elections following the end of apartheid, and the civil war in Rwanda. He has written two books on South Africa, The Bondage of Fear and Season of Blood, which won the 1995 Orwell Prize.
In 1995, Keane was posted to Hong Kong. Later on, he was appointed Africa editor. However, in 2020 he stepped down from his role as Africa editor due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Currently, he is serving as a Foreign Correspondent for BBC News.
Fergal Keane PTSD
In 2020, Keane stepped down from his role as Africa editor due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). His diagnosis was the result of “several decades of work in conflict zones around the world”, said the BBC’s head of newsgathering, Jonathan Munro. He added that Keane had “been dealing privately with the effects of PTSD for several years”.
Keane, who was appointed an OBE for his journalism in 1996, will continue to report for BBC News but in a new role.
Fergal Keane Salary and Net Worth
His salary ranges between £205,000 to £209,999 a year. His net worth is also estimated to be $19 million.
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