Peter David (journalist)
| Peter David | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Peter Howard David September 7, 1951 Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Died | May 10, 2012 (aged 60) Charlottesville, Virginia |
| Education | University of London |
| Occupation | Journalist and writer |
| Known for |
The Economist Washington bureau chief |
Peter David (September 7, 1951 – May 10, 2012) was the Washington bureau chief and primary U.S. political correspondent for The Economist, the U.K.-based weekly magazine, with which he worked for his last 28 years. He supervised coverage of the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s and became the magazine's foreign editor from 2002 to 2009, covering the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. David also previously authored the "Bagehot" column on British politics, before finally moving to the U.S. to author the "Lexington" column on American politics.
Peter David was born in Johannesburg, South Africa to a family of Lithuanian Jews who had settled in South Africa decades earlier to escape pogroms. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a left-wing political activist who fought against the apartheid government. After the Sharpeville massacre there in 1960, where 69 people were killed by police, she feared arrest and the family relocated to London within days. They eventually settled in Liverpool.
After graduating from the University of London in 1972, where he studied sociology, he took jobs as a journalist for various magazines, among those were journals covering house plants and UFOs.
David became the Washington bureau chief for Nature, the world's most cited journal on science. In 1984 he then joined The Economist as a science writer. He soon became the magazine's "main authority" on the Middle East while also writing the Bagehot column covering British politics and running its business sections. Later, he became its foreign editor for international topics, acting as "editorial manager and senior writer."
"People tend to think in black and white. America is either in decline or it is ordained to be for ever the world’s greatest nation. Government is either paralyzed or it is running amok, stifling liberty and enterprise and snuffing out the American dream. The election campaign accentuates the negative and sharpens this binary illusion." Peter David (quoted from his last column)
According to his friend Clive Crook, senior editor of The Atlantic, "he was respected for his knowledge. As a boss he was known for his kindness and generosity, as a writer for his wit, even-handedness and unaffected elegance," noting that "David was a superb journalist, one of the best The Economist ever hired. His range was stunning"
...
Wikipedia