INSPIRE Fellow: Nik Gowing

Nik Gowing was a main news presenter for the BBC's international 24-hour news channel BBC World News from 1996-2014. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy of King's College, London.

For 18 years, he worked at ITN where he was bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw, and Diplomatic Editor for Channel Four News (1988-1996). He has been a member of the councils of Chatham House (1998–2004), the Royal United Services Institute (2005–present), and the Overseas Development Institute (2007-2014), the board of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy including vice chair (1996-2005), and the advisory council at Wilton Park (1998-2012).

Gowing has extensive reporting experience over three decades in diplomacy, defence and international security.

His published Harvard study in 1994 challenged conventional wisdom of an automatic cause and effect relationship between real-time television coverage of conflicts (the ‘CNN factor') and the making of foreign policy. His most recent study is ‘Skyful of Lies and Black Swans: The New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crises'.