Christopher Wenner

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Christopher Wenner bigraphy, stories - British journalist

Christopher Wenner : biography

6 December 1954 –

Christopher Wenner (born 6 December 1954) is a British journalist and former British television presenter.

Blue Peter The Awakening

In 1985, whilst working as a war correspondent in Beirut, he went missing; he turned up again, safe and well, after 18 days. In 1991, he shot footage of a demonstration in Dili, East Timor, preceding a massacre and during the massacre itself. He filmed inside the Santa Cruz cemetery among the dead and the dying, as soldiers advanced in a well-organised operation against a huge crowd of East Timorese engaged in peaceful protest. It was Wenner’s footage that brought the plight of the East Timorese to world attention. In 1992 his work was awarded the Amnesty International UK Media Award for the Yorkshire Television, First Tuesday program "Cold Blood – "The massacre of East Timor"".

In 1999 Wenner returned to East Timor and his reports from there. under the name of Max Stahl. won the 2000 Rory Peck Award for hard news war journalism.

Wenner was one of the first Western journalists to recognize the scope of tensions in Chechnya, going in there with his cameraman, filmmaker and author Peter Vronsky in 1992 to report on the break-away republic and nuclear weapons materials smuggling for the Canadian produced television special The Hunt for Red Mercury.

In 1998, whilst working as an ITN journalist for Channel 4, Wenner was beaten by Serb civilians during a mass protest.

He returned to Blue Peter in 1983 and 1998 to celebrate the show’s birthdays. He is now a father of two, and runs his own production company, as well as continuing his career in journalism.

In April 2012, it was reported that he was receiving treatment for throat cancer. Members of the East Timorese National Parliament wished him a speedy recovery.