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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China tries to discredit the press and to convince citizens not to believe their own eyes. Trump's White House seems to favor similar tactics, writes Frank Langfitt, NPR's former China correspondent. -
Boston, San Francisco, London, Sydney — D.C.'s massive protest has spawned sister marches in all 50 states and hundreds of cities across seven continents. Here's a glimpse of some of the biggest. -
The year 2016 ends in China amid an unprecedented crackdown on human rights attorneys. But the Communist Party's intimidation tactics sometimes have the opposite effect.
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The town of Sunderland, where jobs depend on a foreign employer, Nissan, voted resoundingly for Britain to leave the EU even though that could work against its economic interests. -
The British government's counter-radicalization program Prevent has had mixed reviews. Supporters say it's reaching those at risk; critics argue it unfairly targets Muslims. -
The U.K. prime minister's office rejects the suggestion, pointing out that it already has an ambassador in Washington. A Downing Street spokesman says dryly: "There is no vacancy." -
"It's overwhelming for me to see the huge amount of disenfranchised people who feel the government has failed them," said one government worker who watched results roll in at the U.S. Embassy.
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On his last day on the campaign trail, Donald Trump again drew parallels to the Brexit vote in the U.K. British voters say some comparisons are valid, but many expect a different outcome at the polls. -
In a surprise ruling, a British court has ruled that the government cannot trigger Article 50 — departure from the EU — without the approval of Parliament. The government is expected to appeal.
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Sunday's Jaguars vs. Colts game drew 84,000 fans to Wembley Stadium, and they spent as much as $600 apiece for tickets. How did an American sport find such devoted fans in the U.K.?
