Alex Spillius

Contributing Analyst

Alex Spillius was a NewsGuard Contributing Analyst, based in London. Spillius spent the bulk of his career in journalism as a foreign correspondent and editor with the Daily Telegraph, serving as Southeast Asia correspondent, assistant foreign editor, Washington correspondent, and diplomatic correspondent for the paper. Based in Delhi and Bangkok from 1997-2004, he won an Amnesty International prize for reports from Kandahar on the Taliban’s rule.

Spillius covered the 2008 and 2012 US elections, as well as the Iraq war and the East Timor referendum, and as an editor coordinated coverage of major international stories. He originally trained as a reporter on the Hendon & Finchley Times weekly in north London, before freelancing as a feature writer, principally for the Guardian, Observer and Independent on Sunday.

Since leaving full-time journalism in 2014, he has contributed to BBC Radio 4, the Sunday Times, and the World Today magazine, and has appeared on panels discussing the media industry at a Council of Europe event and the Chatham House annual conference. He is a member of the Journalism Trust Initiative, a volunteer project led by Reporters Without Borders to encourage transparency, independence, and ethical conduct in the media.

As co-founder of the consultancy Foreign Desk Ltd, he advises international charities on communications and provides training and mentoring for journalists overseas. While at the public affairs firm Mercury, Spillius acted as a media adviser to Prince Ali of Jordan’s 2016 FIFA presidential bid, and, pro bono, consulted the European Movement UK’s 2016 referendum campaign. He also worked as a ghost writer in the final weeks of Ed Miliband’s 2015 election campaign, and volunteered as a writer for Sadiq Khan’s 2016 London mayoral campaign.