Anna Foster is set to bring the BBC’s flagship morning news programme, Today, to Salford from April as one of its main presenters.
Foster is well known to BBC audiences, having guided viewers and listeners through some of the biggest global and domestic stories over the years, both as a news anchor in the studio and as an on-location correspondent. As a former Middle East correspondent for the BBC, she will bring further significant international experience to the team.
She will present the Today programme from both London and Salford, and continue to play a key role in helping to lead the BBC’s coverage of foreign news and viewers can still expect to see her on TV news bulletins for major stories.
She said: “There are few more exciting opportunities for a journalist than presenting Today, and I’m thrilled to be joining the team. I’ve always loved making important, agenda-setting, engaging radio, and there’s nowhere better to do that. It’s such a beloved programme to so many people, and I can’t wait to be a part of it.”
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John McAndrew, director of live and daily news, added: “From breaking news to long-form interviews, audiences will be familiar with Anna’s tremendous range and rich, varied experience covering the biggest stories at home and abroad for the BBC for more than twenty years. Her warm, enthusiastic, and engaging style is perfect for Today and I’m delighted that she’s joining the team.”
Mohit Bakaya, director of speech and controller of Radio 4, said: “Anna is a terrific addition to the Today team. She brings important international reporting experience at a time when it is needed so urgently by listeners to Radio 4. She is a brilliant journalist and skilled presenter, and I can’t wait to hear her, alongside Nick, Amol, Justin and Emma, getting to grips with the important stories on the nation’s biggest speech breakfast programme.”
Today is the BBC’s flagship morning news programme and is the most listened-to breakfast radio news programme in the UK.
Foster is currently a presenter for the BBC’s Salford-based News at One and also regularly presents on location for the BBC News Channel and the BBC News at Six and Ten.
Foster’s recent work for the BBC News at One, BBC News Channel and the BBC News at Six and Ten has earned her an RTS award nomination in the prestigious ‘Network Presenter of the Year’ category. Before that, she was a Middle East correspondent for the BBC, based in Beirut and reporting from across the region.
As Middle East correspondent, Anna reported from the epicentre of the Turkish earthquake using just a mobile phone, as one of the first journalists on the scene. In recent years she’s covered the events of October 7th and the Israel-Gaza war, the conflict in Ukraine, the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and the famine in South Sudan. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan she embedded four times with British military forces, and returned to Iraq and Syria years later to report on the humanitarian crisis caused by the rise of the Islamic State group.
She also spent nearly a decade presenting BBC 5 Live Drive and guiding audiences through some of the biggest news and sport stories of recent times. She regularly broadcasts across the BBC, from her former home at Radio 1 Newsbeat to the BBC World Service, as well as writing for the BBC News website. She joined the BBC in April 2002.
Anna is also an award-winning documentary-maker. She won Gold New York Radio Awards for her features ‘15 Minutes from Mosul’ and ‘From The Ground Up’ – both for the World Service – which focussed on the under-reported conflict in the Central African Republic. Her 5 Live team also won the Association of British Science Writers award in 2019 for a special programme on the groundbreaking ‘Women of NASA’.
