Aamir Ghauri

Aamir Ghauri has recently re-joined Pakistan’s ARY News as a Program Host. In July 2009, he launched/edited an English language free weekly newspaper – The Asian Journal. The paper catered for four major Asian ethnic communities in the UK i.e. Indian, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and the Sri Lankan.

In 2008, Ghauri worked as the Director News, Dunya TV, where he built a dynamic news team and brought an embryonic news channel to 24 in-house Production Capacity. Previously, he headed the Geo TV’s European news operations. Before joining Geo in March 2005, he worked for both Pakistani and international news media including the BBC.

Ghauri has an MSc in International Politics of Near & Middle East and Modern South Asia from the London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. He also briefly practiced law in Pakistan after graduating from the Punjab University Law College in Lahore. He left law for journalism in the late 1980s.

Aamir Ghauri started his professional career as an attorney-at-law with Ashtar Ali & Associates in 1986 in Lahore, Pakistan. A couple of years later he left law and joined The Nation, a Lahore-based English-language daily at a time when journalism was a no-go profession for most university graduates. He left The Nation for a bolder newspaper, The Frontier Post and worked on the central-news desk for two years.

In September 1990, Ghauri joined the founding team that launched Pakistan's first multi-edition English-language newspaper, The News International. He worked as the paper's news editor and then deputy editor. He was transferred to London in 1998 as the newspaper's first foreign correspondent. During this period, he filed news from various European capitals and broke many stories on Pakistan's leading politicians' foreign assets, properties and interests.

In September 2001, just ten days before 9/11, Ghauri left The News for ARY Digital, a UK-based satellite television channel as its first Head of News and Current Affairs. Ghauri not only helped lay the foundations of the channel as the leading source of information for Pakistanis within and without Pakistan but also visualized, directed and fronted ARY Digital's most popular current affairs program - Views on News. In November 2001, he joined BBC Asian Network as a broadcast journalist. He also free-lanced for the London-based Prime TV and presented a daily live current affairs program - The World Today - for over two years.

Ghauri is currently working on his first novel and a book on Pakistan.

Ghauri regularly appears on international news networks including the BBC, CNN, Sky, Aljazeera English and Press TV as a political commentator. He has participated as an analyst on various Pakistani news channels including Geo News, Aaj and CNBC.

Ghauri has also been a speaker at elite international educational & media institutions like the London School of Economics, SOAS, Fletcher School of Diplomacy, Boston University, Frontline Club etc.

Distinctions:

* Aamir Ghauri was selected by the British Foreign Office as the only Muslim journalist to cover Prime Minister Blair’s visit to Indonesia in 2006.

* He was the first TV journalist of Pakistani origin to report from Israel in 2006 during the Israel-Hizbollah war.

* Ghauri was the only Pakistani journalist to travel to the border regions of Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro during the 1999 war between Serbia and Kosovars.

* He was moved from London to Washington DC in 2006 to anchor Geo News’ special broadcast covering the Congressional elections.

* Ghauri was awarded as the best journalist of year in London in 2010 by Pakistani community organizations.

* He was presented a Gold Medal by Pakistan’s Ambassador to Washington in 2004 for his journalistic contribution to Pakistani media.

Written Work:

Aamir Ghauri authored The Divine Destruction, a pictorial commentary on the devastating South Asian earthquake in October 2005. His poems have been published in Pakistan and abroad including in the International Society of Poets' Voices on the Wind.