Martin Bashir is an awarding-winning journalist who hosts his own show on MSNBC weekdays at 4 p.m. ET. Bashir joined NBC News as an MSNBC anchor and a correspondent on Dateline NBC in December 2010. He is best known for conducting a series of exclusive interviews and making ground-breaking, landmark documentaries.
He has lived and worked in New York since 2004, when he joined ABC News as co-anchor of Nightline. He has made a number of critically acclaimed documentaries. His first, which featured evidence of steroid abuse by Olympic athletes and included an exclusive interview with BALCO President Victor Conte, provoked the Senate to investigate the use of performance enhancing substances by baseball players and other American sportsmen and women. The BALCO film won an award at the Chicago TV and Film Festival.
In August 2006, in a two-hour primetime special, he told the story of the American Imposter, a bail jumper from Florida who lived for more than 16 years as a fake Lord in the United Kingdom. The film contained the only interview with Buckingham who confessed to being Charles Stopford and explained how he managed to create a web of lives that deceived a wife, two children and the British authorities.
His contributions to Nightline include the confessions of a soldier in Iraq (exclusively interviewed from his prison cell in Kuwait) who has since been sentenced to life imprisonment for the pre-meditated murder of Iraqi civilians; the most authoritative account of the Queens shooting in New York (including exclusive interviews with a victim and a witness) when police fired 50 shots at three unarmed men, killing Sean Bell who was due to be married the following day; and an exclusive interview with legendary baseball player Jose Conseco, who confessed to supplying performance-enhancing drugs to a number of fellow professionals.
Prior to joining ABC News, and whilst working for the BBC, he conducted his now historic conversation with the late Diana, Princess of Wales, which remains the only television interview with her. He secured an exclusive interview with Louise Woodward who was found guilty of murder – later reduced to involuntary manslaughter – whilst she was working as an au pair in Boston.
In the wake of terrorist attacks in the United States on 9/11, Martin Bashir reported and presented an ITV special entitled “A Day in September” which comprised of a detailed account of the 11th of September. The film was given special commendation by the Independent Television Commission which regulates ITV and was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award.
In 2003, Martin Bashir’s documentary “Living with Michael Jackson” featured exclusive and extraordinary access to one of the biggest stars of the modern musical world and was broadcast in over 60 international territories. The film was nominated for a BAFTA award (the UK equivalent of an Oscar). This program was followed by “Who Wants to be a Millionaire: A Major Fraud,” a film about Major Charles Ingram and his wife Diana who were found guilty of cheating their way to the top prize on the British version of this international quiz show. It achieved the biggest audience for any factual program in the UK since 1997 and was, again, broadcast around the world.
Martin has also won a number of other awards for his work, including three BAFTA nominations, five Royal Television Society awards, and two Broadcasting Press Guild awards, and he has collected a BAFTA award for his interview with the late Princess Diana. He was the Royal Television Society’s Journalist of the Year in 1996. In 1998, he was voted Journalist of the Year by the BBC’s International Awards. In 1999, he was honored twice at the Houston Film and Television Awards for current affairs documentaries.
His distinguished career has involved work on a wide range of television and radio programs including “Panorama,” “Public Eye,” “The Midnight Hour,” the education series “Just One Chance,” “Sunday” and “Pick of the Week.” He has written for a variety of publications including The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The Standard, The Sunday Express, The Tatler and a sports column in The Observer.
Born in 1963, he completed a first degree in English and post-graduate research at Kings College in London before starting work as a journalist in 1986. He is married with three children, is a keen sportsman, and plays the electric bass. He released his first album, “Bass Lion,” in December 2010. He supports the work of Charley’s Fund, a charitable organization which is seeking to find a cure for Muscular Dystrophy (he had a brother who died from the condition).
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