Frank Langfitt
Frank Langfitt is NPR's London correspondent. He covers the UK and Ireland, as well as stories elsewhere in Europe.
Langfitt arrived in London in June 2016. A week later, the UK voted for Brexit. He's been busy ever since, covering the most tumultuous period in British politics in decades. Langfitt has reported on everything from Brexit's economic impact, Chinese influence campaigns and terror attacks to the renewed push for Scottish independence, political tensions in Northern Ireland and Megxit. Langfitt has contributed to NPR podcasts, including Consider This, The Indicator from Planet Money, Code Switch and Pop Culture Happy Hour. He also appears on the BBC and PBS Newshour.
Previously, Langfitt spent five years as an NPR correspondent covering China. Based in Shanghai, he drove a free taxi around the city for a series on a changing China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people. As part of the series, Langfitt drove passengers back to the countryside for Chinese New Year and served as a wedding chauffeur. He expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China (Public Affairs, Hachette).
While in China, Langfitt also reported on the government's infamous "black jails" — secret detention centers — as well as his own travails taking China's driver's test, which he failed three times.
Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He reported from Sudan, covered the civil war in Somalia, and interviewed imprisoned Somali pirates, who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab Spring, Langfitt covered the uprising and crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered coal mine disasters in West Virginia, the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcy of General Motors. His story with producer Brian Reed of how GM failed to learn from a joint-venture factory with Toyota was featured on This American Life and has been taught in business schools at Yale, Penn and NYU.
In 2008, Langfitt covered the Beijing Olympics as a member of NPR's team, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. Langfitt's print and visual journalism have also been honored by the Overseas Press Association and the White House News Photographers Association.
Before coming to NPR, Langfitt spent five years as a correspondent in Beijing for The Baltimore Sun, covering a swath of Asia from East Timor to the Khyber Pass.
Langfitt spent his early years in journalism stringing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and living in Hazard, Kentucky, where he covered the state's Appalachian coalfields for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Prior to becoming a reporter, Langfitt dug latrines in Mexico and drove a taxi in his hometown of Philadelphia. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
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People in the courtroom wept as the footage was shown during a preliminary hearing for former Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines, who is charged with first-degree murder.
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A journalistic source who received a lot of media attention is now accused of being a con man. It's a story about journalism integrity and the challenges of covering the Chinese Communist party.
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An example of how journalism sometimes works: a team investigates one story, one narrative, and if they keep an open mind and dig into the facts, they discover the real story is entirely different.
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A young political dissident in Europe made his name in the news media as a defiant critic of the Chinese Communist Party. His former housemate and alleged victim says he's a grifter.
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The dictators of today aren't united by ideology, writes Anne Applebaum: They operate like companies, focused on preserving their wealth, repressing their people and maintaining power at all costs.
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Last week, Britain’s center-left Labour Party celebrated a big win over the long-ruling Conservative Party. Then, Sunday in France, voters rejected a surging far-right populist party.
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Voters in 76 countries are going to the polls this year – including the five largest democracies. And this surge of voting comes as democracy has been in decline.
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Millions of voters around the world have gone to the polls in recent weeks to elect their leaders. What are some key takeaways and what might they mean for elections still to come?
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British elections will happen a little over a month from now. Conservatives have led the United Kingdom for more than a decade, but polls show the party has a good chance of being booted from power.