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Ian Katz
Ian Alexander Katz (born 9 February 1968) is a British journalist and broadcasting executive who is currently Chief Content Officer at Channel 4, overseeing all editorial decision making and commissioning across Channel 4's linear channels, streaming services and social media.
Katz originally followed a career in print journalism, and was a deputy editor of The Guardian until 2013. He then became the editor of the Newsnight current affairs programme on BBC Two, a role which he left in late 2017 to join Channel 4.
Born into a Jewish family he spent the first ten years of his life in South Africa. At that point, Katz and his family moved to London.
Katz was educated at University College School, an independent school for boys in Hampstead in northwest London, followed by New College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Katz joined the short-lived Sunday Correspondent as a graduate trainee in 1989 along with Jonathan Freedland, a future colleague. During the following year Katz moved to The Guardian remaining there until his BBC appointment in 2013, apart taking up a Laurence Stern fellowship at The Washington Post in 1993. During his period at The Guardian, he was successively a reporter, foreign correspondent (in New York 1994–97), edited the G2 supplement for eight years and was responsible for the Saturday (2006–08) and the weekday editions of the newspaper,
Katz was responsible for the new guardian.co.uk website in 1998. As features editor in January 2003, he ran an image commissioned from artist Gillian Wearing for the G2 front cover which consisted of the words: "Fuck Cilla Black". Intended to promote an article about the decline in the quality of British television, readers complained about the decline in the quality of newspaper journalism. Black's agent, her son Robert Willis, described it as a "cheap publicity stunt", and Wearing apologised for the offence caused.
In 2004, while editor of the G2 supplement, and having bought a list of voters, Katz oversaw the campaign for Guardian readers to pair with undecided voters in the marginal Clark County, Ohio to help swing the 2004 US presidential election against George W. Bush and in favour of John Kerry. The campaign did not have a successful outcome; it was dropped after a negative response and Bush won Clark County. In 2008, he became deputy editor, at the same time as Paul Johnson and Katharine Viner.
As deputy editor, latterly overseeing News and Business coverage from Spring 2010, Katz supervised The Guardian's investigation by Nick Davies, and others, into the News International phone hacking scandal. Following the release in 2011 of the Palestine Papers by broadcaster Al Jazeera and The Guardian, Katz defended 'the newspaper against attacks from Ron Prosor, at the time the Israeli ambassador to the UK, who had seen it as demonstrating the newspaper's "affinity for Hamas". This assertion Katz wrote was "based on a highly tendentious reading of a single op-ed column [by Seumas Milne] and a single line of one of two editorials which the paper ran on the Palestine Papers".
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Ian Katz
Ian Alexander Katz (born 9 February 1968) is a British journalist and broadcasting executive who is currently Chief Content Officer at Channel 4, overseeing all editorial decision making and commissioning across Channel 4's linear channels, streaming services and social media.
Katz originally followed a career in print journalism, and was a deputy editor of The Guardian until 2013. He then became the editor of the Newsnight current affairs programme on BBC Two, a role which he left in late 2017 to join Channel 4.
Born into a Jewish family he spent the first ten years of his life in South Africa. At that point, Katz and his family moved to London.
Katz was educated at University College School, an independent school for boys in Hampstead in northwest London, followed by New College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Katz joined the short-lived Sunday Correspondent as a graduate trainee in 1989 along with Jonathan Freedland, a future colleague. During the following year Katz moved to The Guardian remaining there until his BBC appointment in 2013, apart taking up a Laurence Stern fellowship at The Washington Post in 1993. During his period at The Guardian, he was successively a reporter, foreign correspondent (in New York 1994–97), edited the G2 supplement for eight years and was responsible for the Saturday (2006–08) and the weekday editions of the newspaper,
Katz was responsible for the new guardian.co.uk website in 1998. As features editor in January 2003, he ran an image commissioned from artist Gillian Wearing for the G2 front cover which consisted of the words: "Fuck Cilla Black". Intended to promote an article about the decline in the quality of British television, readers complained about the decline in the quality of newspaper journalism. Black's agent, her son Robert Willis, described it as a "cheap publicity stunt", and Wearing apologised for the offence caused.
In 2004, while editor of the G2 supplement, and having bought a list of voters, Katz oversaw the campaign for Guardian readers to pair with undecided voters in the marginal Clark County, Ohio to help swing the 2004 US presidential election against George W. Bush and in favour of John Kerry. The campaign did not have a successful outcome; it was dropped after a negative response and Bush won Clark County. In 2008, he became deputy editor, at the same time as Paul Johnson and Katharine Viner.
As deputy editor, latterly overseeing News and Business coverage from Spring 2010, Katz supervised The Guardian's investigation by Nick Davies, and others, into the News International phone hacking scandal. Following the release in 2011 of the Palestine Papers by broadcaster Al Jazeera and The Guardian, Katz defended 'the newspaper against attacks from Ron Prosor, at the time the Israeli ambassador to the UK, who had seen it as demonstrating the newspaper's "affinity for Hamas". This assertion Katz wrote was "based on a highly tendentious reading of a single op-ed column [by Seumas Milne] and a single line of one of two editorials which the paper ran on the Palestine Papers".