Snow, Jon (1947- )

English journalist. He became lead presenter of the UK's Channel 4 news on ITN in 1989. He is known as a hard-hitting reporter, and notable stories include coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, wars in the Middle East and Africa, his exposure of the Attorney General's secret advice on Iraq, and reports from Louisiana on Hurricane Katrina.

He began his journalism career at LBC radio station, moving to ITN in 1976, where he served as Washington correspondent 1983-86 and diplomatic editor 1986-89. He returned to radio in 2006, hosting the weekly news programme Jon Snow Reports on Oneworld Radio. The Royal Television Society Awards named him Presenter of the Year in 1994 and Journalist of the Year in 2006, and he received the Richard Dimbleby prize for television at the BAFTA awards in 2005.

Snow was born in Ardingly, Sussex, and studied law at the University of Liverpool before being suspended for his role in a student protest and choosing not to return. He worked in London for the New Horizon Youth Center, a charity providing aid to young people with drug addictions, where he eventually became chairman, and he was a VSO teacher in Uganda. He was chairman of the Prison Reform Trust 1992-97 and chancellor of Oxford Brookes University 2001-08. He published a memoir of his years as a foreign correspondent, Shooting History, in 2005.