By Fran Gillespie/Doha

At the November meeting of the Qatar-British Business Forum (QBBF) held on Monday, members were welcomed by vice-chairman Gary Mond. The distinguished after-lunch speaker was the renowned broadcaster Stephen Cole, one of the world’s most recognisable and respected faces of international television journalism.
In his address, Cole said that he began his career some 40 years ago as a trainee reporter with a British provisional newspaper, and served three years as a court reporter, interviewing both representatives of the law and criminals, including, he said, some “famous murderers”. Clearly, his exceptional talents were quickly recognised, as he was then offered a position on the staff of The Daily Mirror newspaper and, at the same time, another with the widely popular BBC news and current affairs programme ‘Nationwide’. It was a difficult choice to make, but eventually he decided to join the BBC.
From that moment his career in TV journalism was launched. From the BBC he went on to work on ITV’s News At Ten. Since then, Cole has anchored the launches of Sky News (London), CNN International, BBC World Asia and Click Online, which covered information technology. He presented the show from 24 countries and hosted numerous prestigious IT events in Asia and South America.
Covering global news, remarked the speaker, was “very exciting”. He reported on the Gulf war, the horrors of the Bosnian war, and witnessed the end of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall. After several years of presenting award-winning coverage of Europe, he went global and joined Al Jazeera International (English) in London six years ago.
For the past two years, Cole has been based in Doha. “Al Jazeera,” he said, “was created to bridge the gap between north and south, and tries to tell the truth in an independent way. The news must be both credible and accurate.” As Senior Anchor at Al Jazeera, he has covered the momentous events of the Arab Spring. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he mentioned, spoke highly of Al Jazeera’s “real news”. Cole concluded his talk by pointing out the huge sums involved in running a TV station of the high calibre of Al Jazeera. “Costs are at least a million dollars per day, with no prospect of any financial return.”