James Longman Official Biography
James Longman has been a foreign correspondent for ABC news since 2017. Based in London, his work takes him all over the world -- to date, more than 45 countries and counting. He has covered some of the most important international events of our time. He was in Moscow when Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and spent a month reporting from the Russian capital with the situation deteriorating by the day. He then spent more than 12 weeks in Ukraine and was one of the first reporters to see firsthand the horrors in Bucha.
From the fight against the Islamic State group on the Syrian front line, confronting Chechen authorities about abuses against LGBTQ+ people, terror attacks across Europe and further abroad to tagging humpback whales in the Antarctic, Longman has one of the most varied briefs in American network news. He was the first U.S. network reporter at the Thai cave where the soccer team went missing and was the first to interview them after their rescue. In Syria, he was the first to gain a television interview with American IS bride Huda Mothana. During the coronavirus crisis, he traveled to more than 15 countries to document the unfolding pandemic while millions were on lockdown.
Longman also fronted the National Geographic special “Virus Hunters,” in which he traveled around the world to meet front-line researchers working to stop the next pandemic. An adventure that took him from bat caves in Liberia to the pig farms of the American Midwest, “Virus Hunters” aired in 173 countries in over 40 languages Prior to joining ABC, Longman worked at the BBC as a Beirut correspondent and a general news reporter. He covered terrorist attacks across Europe, mental health issues and adolescent drug use. Longman started at the age of 24 when, as a young Arabic graduate, he stationed himself in Syria at the beginning of the war. Embedded with activist networks as the protest movement developed, Longman wrote for a number of publications and helped arrange access for news organizations.
Longman won the David Bloom Award for his work in Chechnya, was nominated for three News Emmy Awards for work in Thailand and the Middle East, and was nominated for the Royal Television Society 2016 Young Talent of the Year Award. Longman was raised bilingual in French and English and speaks Arabic. He graduated in Arabic from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and has a masters in comparative politics from the London School of Economics.
