Stephen Cole is a British-born international broadcast journalist and current Chairman of the Institute of Diplomacy and Business. Cole is an anchorman and was part of the launch team for CNN in the US and Al Jazeera English in London. He also worked for the BBC where he presented the corporation's premier technology programme "Click."
Career
;CGTN He is also a presenter on "The Agenda", a political talk show, which is shown on the channel at regular intervals ;Al Jazeera English Cole joined Al Jazeera English on 2 December 2005, in the run-up to its launch. He is currently an anchor, based at the main broadcast-centre, in Doha in Qatar, where he was a presenter on the flagship-programme Newshour. He was also a host of studio-based discussion-programmes, such as Inside Story. ;BBC News At the BBC, Cole was a presenter of the BBC World programme Click Online from 2000 to 2005 and was a regular newsreader on BBC World News. During the strike action by BBC technical staff and journalists on 23 May 2005, he was the stand-in presenter for the nationalBBC News coverage, which included presenting the Six O'Clock News and Ten O'Clock News bulletins on BBC One and BBC News 24. The bulletins apparently drew in more viewers than usual and resulted in his becoming known as "the Peter Pan of television". ;CNN As well as helping launching Al Jazeera English, Cole is probably best known for being part of the launch-teams of two other leading broadcasters. One of the organisations was CNN International, in their new facility in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1989. ;Sky News The other launch in which he was involved was that of Sky News. In 1989, he started his career as an anchor with the organisation, then known as BSkyB. ;ITV Before that, he worked for Central Television in Birmingham, Anglia Television's About Anglia, and also for ITN.
Business interests
Cole runs his own firm, Cole Productions, for non-broadcasting business, and is also the chairman of the Institute of Diplomacy and Business, the organisation he co-founded in 2011. He is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and in addition is a regular judge at the Royal Television Society News Awards. In 2012, he was appointed to the board of the Premiership Rugby ClubLondon Welsh.
Personal life
Stephen is married to Anne-Marie Cole, a BBC Radio 4 producer, who works for Above the Title Productions and Testbed Productions. Stephen has three sons: Dominic, who works in finance; Daniel, who is an officer in the British Army; and Richard, who is a doctor. His main leisure interests are: rugby, tennis and films.
