Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford has been awarded an OBE for services to broadcast journalism in the Queen’s New Year Honours list.
Veteran BBC sports broadcaster Stuart Hall also recieved an OBE, for services to broadcasting and charity.
The award crowns an exceptional year of achievement for the Sky journalist who in February was named RTS journalist of the year for an unprecedented third time.
In September she won the James Cameron award in recognition of her coverage of Libya and the Middle East.
Earlier this year Crawford was part of a team which broadcast exclusively from inside the town of Zawiyah in Libya as it was retaken by pro-Gadaffi forces and later, along with Sky News colleagues, she was the first Western journalist to report from inside Green Square in the centre of Tripoli after the Libyan capita was taken by rebel fighters.
Crawford said: “I am staggered and honoured and cannot quite believe this is not a prank thought up by one of my more mischievous colleagues. TV news is never about just one person.
“Behind me and beside me are my fellow reporters, producers, camera crews, editors and directors. It is a genuine team effort and this fantastic accolade is for all of us.”
In an interview with Press Gazette magazine for the August edition she said: ‘Five years ago I was begging to be a foreign correspondent. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I felt I was only just starting out. I feel like a novice compared to many of the others. I just seem to be very lucky, and I love it. I feel like I’m living the dream.”
She added: ‘You’re just constantly trying to do your best…
‘Some days you have good days, a lot of the time it’s really stressful. We are leading this rather surreal life where we are detained, arrested, being tear-gassed or shot at – when I go home I slot back into being a mother of four and it’s a massive big gear change. You don’t have much time to think most of time…
‘I’m often the one pushing, pushing and pushing. At the end of the day I’m more worried about failure than anything else.”
Hall, 82, began his career at the BBC in 1959 as reporter on Radio Newsreel and Sports Report. For many years he presented BBC TV news programmes in the North West.
He is still a regular voice on Radio 5, he was the original presenter of Question of Sport and of TV show It’s a Knockout.
He told the BBC: “I’ve always regarded myself as a second-rate provincial hack. Well, that was yesterday. Now I’ve got the OBE I’m still a provincial second-rate hack, but I’m a good one. It has made all the difference.”
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