Matt Frei
Matthias "Matt" Frei (born 26 November 1963) is a British-German television news journalist and writer, formerly the Washington, D.C. correspondent for "Channel 4 News". He is now the channel's Europe editor and presenter of the evening news. Personal life. Frei was born in 1963 in Essen, West Germany. His parents were refugees who left Silesia before it became part of Poland, and settled in Germany. In 1973, Frei and his family left Germany and moved to the United Kingdom, where his father became a London correspondent for Deutschlandfunk. Frei was educated at Westminster School, then read  history and Spanish at St Peter's College, University of Oxford, before graduating in 1986. Frei lives in London with his wife Penny and their four children. Career. BBC. Frei joined the BBC and spent a year in the German section of the World Service, before he moved to English language current affairs, where he worked for another year. In 1989, working as a stringer, he reported on the First Intifada in Jerusalem, then on the Persian Gulf War as London foreign affairs correspondent. He took up the post of Bonn correspondent in Germany on the same day as the  fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, Frei took a holiday in Zimbabwe and persuaded aid worker friend Katty Kay to become a journalist. From 1992 to 1996, he worked as Southern Europe correspondent, based in Rome, and covered events in Bosnia, Kosovo, North Africa and various Mafia-related stories. After working as Southern Europe correspondent, he worked as Asia correspondent from 1997 to 2003, based in Hong Kong (taking up his post just before the handover to China) and later in Singapore. From 2002, he was the BBC's Washington, DC correspondent. In 2005, Frei reported from the centre  of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. On 1 October 2007, Frei became the first presenter of the BBC World News one-hour Washington-based news broadcast, "BBC World News America", supported by correspondent Katty Kay. For a week in July 2008, Frei presented the London-based "BBC News at Six" on a relief basis. A year later on 27 July 2009, Frei returned to London again to present the evening bulletin (again as a relief presenter). In January 2011, Frei presented the BBCs "Newsnight" as a relief presenter. Frei presented his own BBC documentary on the life  and times of the German capital, Berlin. It ran from 14 November 2009. As part of his brief as the BBC's Washington correspondent, Frei presented a weekly Radio 4 programme entitled "Americana", which offers listeners slices of life in all of the country's 50 states as well as political news from Washington. Frei's last "Americana" episode was broadcast in May 2011. Channel 4. It was announced in May 2011 that Frei would be switching from the BBC to Channel 4 later in the year. Frei would serve as the broadcaster's Washington correspondent for "Channel 4 News , as well as reporting for the channel's other news programmes. He has since returned often from Washington and has become a semi-regular presenter on Channel 4's evening news slot. In October 2012, Frei headed Channel 4's coverage of the US presidential election, including making a documentary The American Road Trip: Obama's story" in which he visited middle-class voters in communities in the mid-west, including Minneapolis, Northwood, Ohio and Gary, Indiana. LBC. On 24 September 2016, he started presenting the 10:00 am show, occasional Saturdays on LBC radio. During the 2021-2022 Russo-Ukrainian  crisis, Matt has been reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.