Steve Rosenberg

Steven Barnett Rosenberg (born 1968 in Epping, Essex) is a British TV and radio journalist. He is currently the BBC's Moscow correspondent.^[1]

Early life[]

Rosenberg grew up in Chingford, North London. He is Jewish.^[2] In 1894 his great grandfather Haim Gnessin left the city of Shklow in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus) on a passport Rosenberg still has.^[3] Following A-levels at Chingford Senior High, he attended the University of Leeds. In 1991 he achieved a first class degree in Russian Studies. After graduating, in August 1991 Rosenberg moved to Moscow and spent the next 15 years in the Russian capital.^{[citation needed]}

Career[]

During his senior high school summer holidays, Rosenberg worked at the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax.

After moving to Moscow in 1991 to teach English in the Moscow State Technological University STANKIN, Rosenberg secured work with CBS News in the network's Moscow bureau. He spent the next six years at CBS, working first as a translator, then assistant producer, and then producer. Between 1994 and 1996 he was part of the CBS crew covering the first war in Chechnya.

In 1997, Rosenberg became a producer in the BBC's Moscow bureau. In 2000, he was appointed reporter for the BBC in Moscow. Three years later, he became Moscow correspondent. Among the stories he covered in that period was the Kursk submarine disaster (2000),^[4] the Nord Ost Theatre siege (2002)^[5] and the aftermath of the Beslan school attack (2004).^[6] In 2003 he interviewed Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.^[7]

Between 2006 and 2010, Rosenberg was the BBC Berlin correspondent, covering stories in Germany and across Europe. In 2010 he returned to Russia for a second stint as Moscow correspondent.^[8][9]

In 2014 Rosenberg and his film-crew were attacked in Astrakhan by unidentified men after conducting an interview with the sister of a Russian soldier killed during the war in Donbas. The BBC filed an official complaint with the Russian authorities about the attack.^[10][11]

In 2018 Rosenberg was praised by other journalists for confronting Vladimir Putin with a question about the attempted assassination of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Putin did not directly answer the question.^[12]

In 2015, the government of Ukraine issued a decree banning several journalists, including Rosenberg, from entering the country over his coverage of the War in Donbas. The decree stated those banned were a "threat to national interests" or engaged in promoting "terrorist activities". The BBC labelled the ban "a shameful attack on media freedom".^[13] The Ukrainians retracted the ban just a day later.^[14]

In November 2021 Rosenberg conducted a high-profile interview with Belarus’ authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenka. During the interview he elicited the admission from Lukashenko that Belarusian troops "may have helped migrants into [the] EU".^[15][16]

Piano playing[]

As a Eurovision Song Contest fan, Rosenberg covered the contest staged in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2012, where he demonstrated his piano playing skills when appearing on the Ken Bruce show the morning before the event. He played a short excerpt from every Eurovision winning song, a medley lasting ten minutes. He has repeated this several times since, including from embassies of countries staging that year's contest such as Portugal and the Netherlands.^{[citation needed]} Later in the show, he took part in a "Eurovision Popmaster", narrowly losing the competition to the author of The Eurovision Song Contest - The Official History, John Kennedy O'Connor.^{[citation needed]}

In 2013, after an interview, Rosenberg played the piano at the request of last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev; he played "Moscow Nights" which Gorbachev sang, followed by "Dark is the Night" and "The Misty Morning", a song he said was a favourite of his late wife Raisa.^[17] After his interview with Belarusian authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, Rosenberg published his performance of Kupalinka, a protest song of the 2020-2021 Belarusian protests.^[18][19][20]

In June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rosenberg and BBC North West Tonight weather presenter and drummer Owain Wyn Evans joined to present the Match of the Day theme. Rosenberg went on to demonstrate more of his famed piano homages to Russian and English-speaking culture via the BBC with which he entertained people during the Covid-19 pandemic of which there are numerous examples available on the internet.^{[citation needed]}

Waking up one morning in January 2022, he was inspired to create another of his renowned classic composer-like Russifications, this time of the BBC's Teletubbies theme. It joined a tango version which he had also devised.^{[citation needed]}

References[]