Alex Thomson

Alexander James Thomson (born 22 December 1960) is a British television journalist and newscaster. Education Thomson was educated at the state comprehensive Cranbourne Secondary School, in Basingstoke, Hampshire, followed by University College, Oxford. In his gap year, he taught at Fyling Hall School. Thomson has a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from Cardiff University. Life and career Thomson has worked for the BBC in Northern Ireland. He has been with ITN's Channel 4 News since 1988 and is the longest-serving onscreen journalist on the programme. Since then he has won several Royal Television (RTS) Awards for domestic and foreign coverage and TV Journalist of the Year. His foreign coverage has won BAFTA, Emmy and New York TV Festival awards. He has worked on investigations in the UK on Bloody Sunday, the Hillsborough disaster, the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash and Rangers F.C.. His current role is chief correspondent and presenter for Channel 4 News, produced by ITN. He has covered more than twenty wars and conflicts as well as other international issues from climate change and natural disasters to global politics. In June 2012, Thomson's vehicle, in which he and other journalists were travelling while covering the Syrian uprising, came under fire and took evasive action. According to Thomson and others present, this was the result of a small group from the Free Syrian Army who attempted to have the team killed in no-man's land by the government forces as a propaganda stunt to discredit Damascus.