Bill Neely (born 21 May 1959) is a Northern Irish journalist. He was the Chief Global Correspondent for NBC News from 2014 to 2021. He has been a broadcaster since 1981. Neely spent 25 years at ITN's ITV News before retiring from NBC in April 2021.
Early life and education
Neely was born in Glengormley, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, in 1959 and graduated with joint honours in Modern History and English from Queen's University of Belfast. He was named the Queen's University Graduate of the Year in 2021 for his work as a broadcaster.
Career
Bill Neely began his career with BBC Northern Ireland in 1981, at the height of the Republican hunger strikes. He covered the violence in Northern Ireland for six years before joining the BBC in London in 1987. After a period with Sky News, when he helped launch the channel, Neely joined ITN in June 1989. He has covered many of the major world news events of the four decades, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, which he describes as "the best story I ever covered", the break-up of the Soviet Union, numerous wars and terrorist attacks including 9/11, multiple natural disasters and national elections. He has won four BAFTA awards for news coverage, including an unprecedented three consecutive awards (2009–11), an Emmy award, a Monte Carlo Golden Nymph award, a Peabody prize, an Edward R. Murrow award, and numerous other nominations and awards for international news reporting over the past four decades, including eight Emmy nominations for NBC News. He has won four Royal Television Society awards, including the International News Award for coverage of the Haiti earthquake. He has twice been nominated for Broadcasting Journalist of the Year by the London Press Club, winning in 2011.
Neely was Washington correspondent and US Bureau Chief for six years (1991–97), covering two Presidential elections, the Atlanta Olympics and Oklahoma City bombing, the OJ Simpson trial, the Waco siege as well as many major stories across North and South America and the Caribbean. From 1997–2002 he was Europe Correspondent, covering the death of Diana, Princess of Wales for which he was part of the team nominated for a BAFTA award; the crash of Concorde and the wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan. ITN received the Golden Nymph from the Monte Carlo Television Festival, Europe's top award for television journalism, for his work in Kosovo. He has also reported regularly from the Middle East and the United States. For many years Neely was a presenter on ITV News programmes including News at Ten & the ITV Evening News.
Neely has covered five US Presidential election campaigns since 1992. In addition, he has covered elections in Russia, Germany, France, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Jamaica, Iran, and Israel, and has interviewed numerous presidents, Prime Ministers and Heads of State.
His reports from the deadly earthquake in China in 2008 won him the 2009 International Emmy Award for News and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Television News. Earlier in 2008 he reported from the Antarctic – 600 miles from the South Pole – on global warming. He covered the 2005 Pakistan earthquake for which ITV News won a Royal Television Society award and, in the same year, the devastating floods in New Orleans and the Asian tsunami. He was nominated for a BAFTA for coverage of the Beslan siege. He was also part of the ITV News team whose reports from the Asian tsunami won the 2005 BAFTA award for news ("Seven Days That Shook The World").
In 2010, he reported on the earthquake in Haiti, for which he won the 2010 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for the best news coverage. He covered the campaign of Tony Blair in the 1997 United Kingdom general election and David Cameron in the 2010 general election. He also reported on the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Iranian 'Green Revolution' of 2008, as well as terror attacks in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Israel and across Europe.
He reported regularly on the "Arab Spring", firstly from Egypt, then Libya, and during more than a dozen visits to Syria; frontline dispatches that have been broadcast around the world. He interviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2016. In October 2013, he was voted one of the 100 most influential journalists in the world covering conflict.
He won the 2011 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for his reporting of the killings in Cumbria in July 2010; his third BAFTA success in three years. He was twice nominated as Broadcasting Journalist of the Year by the London Press Club, winning the award in 2011.