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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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2024 will be a key test for the health of democracy around the world. Analysis of significant elections in key regions, and what they might portend.
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The Israeli military is sending thousands of soldiers home from Gaza — in part to reenergize the economy which faces a massive labor shortage because of the war.
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Before the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, Israel's government was in the process of trying to overhaul its judiciary, which many Israelis opposed. The plan's opponents say they haven't let down their guard.
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The death toll in Gaza dwarfs any previous war there and the rate appears to have far outstripped that in Ukraine. What is different about the war in Gaza that is driving this change?
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We look at the outrage caused by the released images of Palestinian men detained by Israeli soldiers and stripped down to their underwear. The men are not proven to be Hamas fighters.
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The Biden administration is putting pressure on Israel to reduce casualties in its war on Gaza, but Israel is pushing back against its indispensable ally.
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Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried to undermine the country's democratic system of checks and balances. But the system — and voters — fought back.
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The past seven years have been the most tumultuous in the United Kingdom since the end of World War II. After five prime ministers and two monarchs, Frank Langfitt reflects on his tenure in the U.K.
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People in Ireland lined up to see President Joe Biden during his visit on Wednesday, but the political reaction to the U.S. president was lukewarm, NPR's Frank Langfitt reports.
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President Biden has landed in Belfast to visit the island of Ireland. He'll be honoring the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended the political violence known as the troubles.