Martin Fletcher is one of the most respected, and honored, foreign correspondents in the history of American television news. Anderson Cooper called him quote for several decades the gold standard of war correspondents. He has been covering world events for thirty-five years, mostly for NBC News. For twenty-six years he was NBC correspondent in Israel and for fifteen, bureau chief as well. He has won almost every award it is possible for a TV journalist to win, including the du Pont, the TV Pulitzer, several Overseas Press Club awards, the Edward R. Murrow award for excellence several times, and many other awards, including five Emmies. One for his coverage of Kosovo, another for Rwanda, and three for his reporting from Israel, one for the first Palestinian uprising, one for the second uprising, and the third for coverage of Israel’s war with Lebanon in 2006.

He walked across the Hindu Kush mountains from Pakistan into Afghanistan with the Mujahideen, today’s Taliban, to report on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was the only television reporter to join the Khmer rouge in Cambodia. He was the only reporter to enter the American embassy in Tehran when Iranian students held American diplomats hostage for 444 days.

He began his journalism career with the BBC in London, continued as a cameraman with Visnews, where he won an award from the Royal Society of Television Cameraman of the Year, and has lived in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and worked in almost every country on the planet.
Martin met his wife in Israel – she was a soldier hitchhiking to her base and he stopped to give her a lift. That was in 1974 and they are still together. They have three sons, all born in Israel.

Martin retired from NBC, but still works for them on contract as a Special Correspondent. He is now devoting himself to books. His first was published two years ago. Breaking News tells the story of his career and explains the many dilemmas he faced while reporting from just about every bad place in the world. His latest book is entitled, Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation.