Jim Muir

Jim Muir (born 3 June 1948) is a British journalist, currently serving as a Middle East correspondent for BBC News, based in Beirut, Lebanon.

Education Muir is of Scottish heritage, but was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, in England in 1948, and was educated at Sedbergh School in Sedbergh, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, before going on to study Oriental Studies (Arabic) at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a first class honours degree in 1969.

Career Muir worked at Frank Cass & Co, a specialist international politics academic publishing company, in London between 1970 and 1974. He drove to Beirut after Christmas 1974, assuming Lebanon to be a safe haven in the turbulent Arab world. However, not long after arriving, a devastating 15-year civil war broke out. Muir was the Beirut correspondent for the Inter Press Service between 1975 and 1978, and then became a freelance correspondent for the BBC, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio, among others. In 1980, he had to relocate to Cyprus and make periodic visits to Lebanon after being put on a Syrian hitlist. He is thought to be "the only western correspondent to cover the [civil war] from start to finish". In 2010, Muir received the MBI Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Media Awards.