Benjamin Zand

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Benjamin Zand
File:Ben Zand.jpg
Born Liverpool, United Kingdom
Nationality British
Alma mater Edinburgh Napier University
Occupation Reporter and documentary maker
Notable credit(s) BBC News, BBC World News, The Travel Show

Benjamin Zand is an award-winning British-Iranian[1] television presenter and filmmaker for the BBC from Liverpool, England.[2] He makes and reports on feature videos and documentaries for BBC TV, online and social media.

Career

During university Benjamin started a travel website and began toying with video production. His first attempt at a documentary was a video called Tehrangeles, featuring Iranians living in LA. After finishing his studies, he had a short stint working at production companies making factual entertainment programming and eventually became a producer at the BBC World Service working on numerous radio programmes, including BBC World Have Your Say. After about a year, he moved on to BBC World News, as a producer and social media manager of BBC Facebook pages, continuing to make videos in his spare time.

Benjamin then became a video journalist and reporter for BBC News, also becoming part of the BBC's video innovation lab. During this time, he covered stories from far-right nationalism[3] to Native Americans[4] in South Dakota. Tasked with creating innovative content for a younger, online-based audience, he helped start up BBC Trending and BBC Newsbeat's video offering, whilst also working for the BBC Travel Show. Towards the end of 2014, he started a series called BBC Pop Up with a BBC colleague. Here, he travelled across the US crowd-sourcing story ideas and making documentaries for BBC World News and BBC News. [5][6]

Now, he is working as a presenter and filmmaker for different departments across the BBC making current affairs documentaries, including BBC Two, the Victoria Derbyshire and The Travel Show.

Awards

Benjamin was named Young Talent of the Year at the 2016 Royal Television Society Journalism Awards. “The judges liked everything about Benjamin, the stories he’d found, the way he filmed them - normally on his own - and the way he told them. They found him original, fresh, provocative, versatile, and, of course, creative."[7]

References