IT was in May 2000 that journalist and newsreader Mishal Husain appeared for the first time on our TV screens. In a span of more than two decades, her work has taken her from refugee camps to international summits and from interviewing prime ministers to interacting with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, thereby, well-establishing her status as a journalistic heavyweight and a name to reckon with in broadcasting.
Husain presents Today on BBC Radio 4 and has presented BBC News at Ten on Sunday nights on BBC1. She has also guest hosted The Andrew Marr Show, as well as BBC Breakfast, BBC News at Six, BBC World News, Impact and HARDtalk.
Husain’s career started in 1991 in Pakistan where she had joined a local English-language daily as an intern but quickly rose to the level of reporter. She then joined Bloomberg Television in London where she was a producer and frequently a presenter. Her BBC career began in 1998 as a producer.
She co-anchored World Business Report in 2001 with Patrick O'Connell, where her stellar reporting on the September 11 attacks earned her the anchoring gig at BBC World News that November, and there she remained until the spring of 2004. She quickly became one of the main presenters on BBC World News, spending time based in Singapore and Washington as well as presenting live on location from around the world.
Her career highlights include some of the TV recent-history’s iconic presentations, including one from Pakistan after the death of Osama Bin Laden and coverage of elections in India in 2014 as well as broadcasting from Pakistan after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007.
She has presented four critically-acclaimed BBC single documentaries and series: Malala – Shot for Going to School, How Facebook Changed the World,and Britain & Europe – The Immigration Question, which was broadcasted in the days before the EU referendum vote.
In 2017 she also hosted a pre-election live debate with seven parties for BBC1. Her book The Skills: From First Job to Dream Job, What Every Woman Needs to Know was published in September 2018.
With parental roots in Pakistan, Husain was born in Northampton in 1973. She was only two when her family moved to the United Arab Emirates, where her father practised as a doctor. She attended the British School in Abu Dhabi. Her family was based in Saudi Arabia as well for a period.
At the age of 12, Husain returned to the UK and joined Cobham Hall, an independent school in Kent. She studied Law at New Hall, Cambridge (now Murray Edwards College, Cambridge), followed by a Master's degree in International and Comparative Law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
As A longstanding BBC presenter, Husain has been one of the most iconic broadcasters and has reported from around the world in places as far and wide as the UK and USA, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Florence in Italy to Pakistan, China, Egypt and Norway.
So, it is somewhat ironic that when her name appeared in BBC gender pay gap scandal of 2017, which revealed that BBC’s highest-paid male presenters collectively pocketed almost four times the total amount of the top four female presenters.
