C4 News sets up fellowship for foreign producers

Channel 4 News has established a fellowship for foreign producers in memory of senior foreign affairs producer Sarah Corp, who died of cancer in 2016.

Corp spent 17 years at C4 News and was behind the programme’s coverage of several US elections, the war in Iraq, the Arab Spring, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti and a clutch of European elections.

In honour of her service, C4 News has created an annual fellowship for one person per year to spend six months on its London foreign desk and six months at its Washington DC bureau.

The successful candidate will receive training and mentoring from the foreign team to help them identify and research stories, set up high-profile interviews, package and edit.

The experience will include live outside broadcasts and working on foreign stories with the digital team.

The Sarah Corp Fellowship is open to anyone with some professional experience in journalism, an eye for detail and a passion for storytelling. Applicants must also be eligible to work in the UK. Deadline for applications is 30 September 2018. Applicants should submit a CV and covering letter to scfellowship@itn.co.uk.

The committee for the fellowship will include the C4 News presenter Jon Snow, editor Ben de Pear, deputy editor Nevine Mabro, international editor Lindsey Hilsum, head of foreign news Liliane Landor, camera operator Philippa Collins and the Independent’s foreign and defence correspondent Kim Sengupta.

Corp’s sister Rachel, who is acting editor of ITV News, will also feature on the committee, along with her mother Prue and husband Charles Bates.

De Pear said: “Sarah was a consummate professional of immense intelligence, and real humanity; a gifted woman whose dedication to her craft, to her colleagues, and to those whose stories needed to be told, was unsurpassed.

“This fellowship will train a new generation of foreign producers with a passion for story-telling - people Sarah would have been proud to call her colleagues.”

Snow added: “A TV reporter, or presenter, is only as good as the producer sustaining them. That was never truer than with Sarah. It is absolutely fitting that our fellowship carries her name.”