NEW YORK, NY, October 23, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Tom Fenton with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Mr. Fenton celebrates many years' experience in his professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes he has accrued in his field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Mr. Fenton embarked upon his professional journey as a journalist in 1961, when he joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun. In just five years, he was promoted to chief of the Rome Bureau, followed by the Paris Bureau in 1968. He covered a wide variety of stories as a foreign correspondent for the newspaper, from wars in the Middle East to the political and economic growth of postwar Europe. Mr. Fenton was acquired by CBS News in 1970, and enjoyed more than 30 years with the network as a foreign correspondent for television and radio, first based in Rome in 1970, then in Israel in 1973 and Paris in 1977. In 1979 he was promoted to Chief European Correspondent and was based in London, then Moscow in 1994, and again in London in 1996.
Mr. Fenton remained in London after his retirement from CBS in 2004. He went on to spend another three years reporting for Public Radio International between 2006 and 2009 and an additional five years as a columnist for globalpost.com, until 2014. In 2005, he authored his first book, "Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, The Business of News and the Danger to Us All," and later published "Junk News: The Failure of the News in the 21st Century" in 2009. Both books were a critique of the dumbing down of the news and a call for reform of how the American media gathers and presents world news that is vital to our security.
During the course of his remarkable career, Mr. Fenton covered most of the major historical events throughout Europe, the Middle East and the countries of the former Soviet Union. He witnessed first hand the Cold War, the decline of the Soviet Empire, the rise of political Islam and what became known as the War on Terror. During the late 1960s, he was assigned to the Arab-Israeli Six Day War, the Vietnam Peace Talks and the Paris Riots, and throughout the 1970s his reporting included the India-Pakistan War, the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War, the war in Cyprus, the Lebanese civil war, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Islamic Revolution and takeover of the American Embassy in Iran. Mr. Fenton did the first American television interview of Ayatollah Khomeini months before he became the Supreme Leader of Iran. In the 1990s, he covered the revolutions in Eastern Europe, the first Gulf War, the Moscow coup in 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Balkan wars. In Britain, he reported on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher upended British politics, and chronicled the ups and downs of the British Royal Family including the tragic death of Princess Diana. The new century took him to Afghanistan and Iraq and what came to be known as America's "endless wars." Although he recently moved to New York, a half century abroad has given him a view of the effectiveness of American interventions in the Middle East that may be more realistic than the Washington consensus.
Mr. Fenton attended Dartmouth College, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in English literature, cum laude, in 1952. He subsequently served in the U.S. Navy between 1952 and 1961, where he was notably stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in the Mediterranean Sea during the Lebanon Crisis in 1958. A highly respected member of several professional organizations, Mr. Fenton has been active with the Association of American Correspondents in London, the Association de la Presse Presidential Paris and, among others, the Foreign Press Association in London. He is also a member of several other organizations, including the Pilgrim Society, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Chatham House, and the Royal United Services Institute.
Among his many awards and recognitions, Mr. Fenton received the Edward Weintal Award from Georgetown University in 1999, which recognizes journalists for distinguished reporting on foreign policy and diplomacy. He also received two Emmy Awards for the death of Princess Diana in 1998, an Emmy for his work on hunger in Africa from the Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, and an Emmy for the 1983 terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. During the early stages of his career, while working for the Baltimore Sun, he received an award from the Overseas Press Club in 1968. Additionally, Mr. Fenton was the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Baltimore in 1999.
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