Cathy Newman
Journalist, Presenter Channel 4 News
Cathy is the first female main presenter of Channel 4 News. She spent over a decade in Fleet Street, latterly with the Financial Times. Since joining Channel 4 News in 2006 she has broadcast a string of scoops, including allegations of violent abuse against the British barrister John Smyth, sexual harassment allegations against the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Rennard, and an investigation into a British sex offender, Simon Harris, which saw him jailed for 17 years.
She was also the only broadcast journalist to travel with Angelina Jolie and the foreign secretary William Hague to the Congo as part of a campaign against sexual violence.
Cathy’s studio interviews are frequently news-making, and many have gone viral – watched by millions online – including combative encounters with the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson and the former motor-racing tycoon Max Mosley. The latter was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award in 2019, and made the front cover of Private Eye.
Cathy also presents the Friday Drivetime programme on Times Radio.
On television she has presented other Channel 4 programmes including Britain Decides: Everything But Brexit debate in the lead up to the 2019 General Election. She previously co-presented the Alternative Election Night with Jeremy Paxman. She regularly presents Channel 4’s Dispatches programmes – recent programmes include The Prince and the Paedophile, focussing on Prince Andrew’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. She has also appeared several times on Have I Got News For You and Christmas Celebrity Genius.
Her first book – Bloody Brilliant Women: Pioneers, Revolutionaries & Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention – about female pioneers in 20th century Britain, was published by HarperCollins in Autumn 2018. Cathy was described by the Observer as a “brilliant writer”. Author Michael Morpurgo said: “This book is so important. No library, no school or university, should be without a copy.” Her follow-up book, It Takes Two, telling the stories of the power of pairings to achieve great things, was published in Autumn 2020.
Cathy has frequently written about politics for the Daily Telegraph. She was a judge on the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015 and the Red Magazine Women of the Year Award 2016. She is a patron of Kids, a charity for disabled children, and an ambassador for Young Minds.
Prior to arriving at Channel 4 News, Cathy worked as chief political correspondent for the Financial Times for three years. Before that she covered politics and media for the FT. Cathy joined the FT from the Independent where she was media business correspondent.
In 2000, Cathy won the prestigious Laurence Stern Fellowship, spending four months following in the footsteps of Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post.
