Sophie McNeill


Sophie McNeill is an Australian journalist, television presenter, and author. She is best known for her work reporting from conflict zones.
Currently she is a reporter with the ABC's investigative program Four Corners and is a former Middle East Correspondent for ABC news; and has delivered reports from across the region including in Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Turkey and Gaza.

Life and career

McNeill began making documentaries in 2001, her first film highlighted the crippling health crisis in a recently-liberated East Timor, for which she received Western Australia's Young Person of the Year Award.
In 2003, McNeill's investigation into the death of an asylum seeker who'd been held under Australia's mandatory detention policy won her the MEAA's Student Journalist of the Year Award, Best Newcomer at the West Australian Media Awards and Best Emerging Director at the West Australian Screen Awards.
She was also a New York Film Festival finalist for her 2005 story Shoot the Messenger, which detailed the shooting of an unarmed, wounded Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque by an American soldier.
McNeill has twice been awarded Australian Young TV Journalist of the Year and in 2010 won a Walkley award for her investigation into the killing of five children in Afghanistan by Australian Special Forces soldiers, and was nominated for a Walkley in 2015 for her coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis. In September 2015, her reporting helped reunite a Syrian refugee family that had become separated on the European refugee trail.
In 2019, she received international recognition for her efforts documenting the asylum claim of Rahaf Mohammed.
In March 2020 ABC Books published McNeill's first book, We Can't Say We Didn't Know: Dispatches from an age of impunity.