NEWS: BBC’s Bell gets IPR President’s gong

Martin Bell, the BBC Television news journalist, has been awarded the

1996 IPR President’s medal.

The award, which is designed to ‘recognise individual contribution to

the PR world,’ was presented to Bell by IPR president Rosemary Brook

last Thursday.

Brook said Bell’s coverage of the war in Bosnia had demonstrated both

professional integrity and a reputation for fair and accurate reporting.

She added: ‘This should be the goal not just of every journalist and

every PR practitioner, but of everyone who has a professional

communications job.’

Bell joined the BBC in 1962 as a trainee news reporter. In 1964 he

moved to London as a general reporter, before becoming a TV reporter in

1965. He received an OBE in the 1992 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for

services for television news.

Past recipients of the President’s medal who, according to the IPR, were

seen to raise the profile of public relations include Richard Branson,

Sir Robert Scott and Jennifer Saunders.