Monday, September 4, 2017

Alex Crawford, Sky News South Africa and Africa correspondent, leaving to head up new bureau in Istabul; replaced by John Sparks.


Alex Crawford, the respected and award-winning Sky News (DStv 402) correspondent for South Africa and Africa, is leaving to head up a new news bureau in Istanbul, Turkey, and will be replaced with John Sparks.

The distinguished, respected and hard-working Alex Crawford has done several (hard-hitting) memorable and brilliant stories from South Africa and across several African countries the past years.

Alex Crawford has far surpassed, in her own on-the-ground African coverage, the barely-there African coverage that viewers get from South Africa's African-shy channels eNCA (DStv 403), SABC News (DStv 404) and ANN7 (DStv 405) who all largely use wire agency and news agency file footage from Reuters and others and don't want to do first-hand reporting from correspondents in African countries.

Unlike South Africa's TV reporters working at eNCA, SABC News and ANN7, Alex Crawford goes to actual African places - reporting from Libya, from inside the Democratic Republic of the Congo where child slaves mine cobalt, from the Zimbabwe border where woman are captured as sex slaves, Malawi's abortion cults, oil pirates in Nigeria and many more.

Alex Crawford is now leaving South Africa to head up a new Sky News bureau in Istanbul, Turkey.

Alex Crawford will be replaced in Sky News' Johannesburg news bureau that covers Africa, by John Sparks, who is currently based in Moscow, Russia.