Toby Harnden


Toby Harnden is an Anglo-American journalist and author. Harnden served as managing editor of the Washington Examiner until February 2020. Earlier, he was Washington bureau chief of The Sunday Times from January 2013 until September 2018. He previously spent 17 years at The Daily Telegraph, based in London, Belfast, Washington, Jerusalem and Baghdad, finishing as US Editor from 2006 to 2011, and was also US Executive Editor of Mail Online and US Editor of the Daily Mail for a year in 2012. He is the author of two books: Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh and Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan. Dead Men Risen won the 2012 Orwell Prize for Books. He was reporter and presenter of the BBC Panorama Special programme Broken by Battle about suicide and PTSD among British soldiers, broadcast on July 15, 2013.

Background

Born at Bowlands maternity home, in Portsmouth, Harnden grew up in Portsmouth, Harefield, Marple and Rusholme, Manchester. He attended Harrytown Comprehensive School in Bredbury, Cheshire and St Bede's College, Manchester. He entered Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in January 1985 and passed out the following August. After studying Modern History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he graduated from Oxford University with a First in July 1988. While at the university, Harnden was Junior Common Room President of Corpus Christi in 1987, succeeding David Miliband. Before becoming a journalist, Harnden was an officer in the Royal Navy, retiring in the rank of Lieutenant in 1994 after service ashore and at sea in the assault ships, and, the minesweeper, the destroyers and and the frigate. During his training, he was an exchange officer with the Royal Norwegian Navy, helping to transport reindeer on troop landing craft. His final naval appointment was in the Ministry of Defence as Flag Lieutenant to the Second Sea Lord. In August 2009, he became an American citizen. He is divorced and is the father of a daughter and son.

Books

Harnden has written two non-fiction books: Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh; and Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan.
Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh, published by Hodder & Stoughton in November 1999, was critically acclaimed and sold more than 100,000 copies. It led to the formation of the Smithwick Tribunal, which Harnden declined to attend to give evidence in February 2012.
Dead Men Risen was published by Quercus Books in March 2011. Publication was delayed after the Ministry of Defence objected to certain passages on "security" grounds. The book had already been cleared for publication by the MOD after a four-month review process that Harnden had agreed to as part of a contract that provided him with access to the Welsh Guards. Following a legal dispute between the MOD and Quercus, the MOD agreed to purchase all 24,000 copies of the first print run of the book, at a cost to the UK taxpayer of £151,450, and oversee their pulping. It was well reviewed and reached number four on The Sunday Times bestseller list. In May 2012, it was awarded the Orwell Prize for books.

Journalism career

Harnden began his career in journalism as a theatre reviewer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a writer of obituaries.
He began at The Daily Telegraph in 1994 as a home news reporter. He was posted to Belfast as the newspaper's Ireland Correspondent in March 1996, shortly after the IRA's first ceasefire had ended. He subsequently covered the IRA's second ceasefire, the Good Friday Agreement and the Omagh bombing of 1998 as well as numerous shootings, explosions, riots and negotiations.
From 1999 to 2003, Harnden was Washington Bureau Chief of The Daily Telegraph. He reported from Washington during the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. He became Middle East Correspondent of The Daily Telegraph in October 2003 and was based in Jerusalem and then Baghdad. Harnden spent much of 2004 and 2005 covering the war in Iraq. He was a "unilateral" reporter during the siege of Najaf in August 2004 and three months later was embedded with the US Army's Task Force 2-2 during the battle of Fallujah.
Harnden joined The Sunday Telegraph in January 2005 and was based in London as the newspaper’s Chief Foreign Correspondent. He reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Bahrain, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Austria, Italy, Estonia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United States and Thailand.
In May 2005, Harnden was imprisoned in Zimbabwe for 14 days after being arrested at a rural polling station on the day of the country's parliamentary elections and deported following acquittal on charges of illegally entering the country and "practicing journalism without accreditation".
Harnden returned to Washington DC in May 2006 as a correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph and in October 2006 became United States Editor of The Daily Telegraph. He covered the 2008 primaries and general election. From 2009 to 2011, he wrote a weekly column for The Sunday Telegraph entitled "Toby Harnden's American Way".
Harnden was shortlisted for the UK's Press Gazette for Digital Journalist of the Year 2008. In 2011, he was ranked at 27 in a list of Top 50 most influential media users of Twitter in the UK. He left the Telegraph at the end of 2011 to join the Daily Mail. In October 2012, it was announced that he would be joining The Sunday Times as Washington Bureau Chief in January 2013.
In February, 2018, Harden was named as the new managing editor of the Washington Examiner. An investigative report by CNN concluded that during Harden's tenure as editor, the newspaper faced a pervasive climate of "workplace terror and bullying." CNN reported that "current and former employees described an abusive work environment in which Harnden... particularly targeted marginalized employees." One company employee told CNN: "He had an aggressive attitude toward almost anyone in the office" but most "particularly anyone who was a woman, person of color, or who was gay."
In February, 2020, Harden was abruptly fired as the managing editor of the Examiner. Hugo Gurdon, the newspaper's editor-in-chief, announced that the parent company of the Examiner was "enlisting a third-party to conduct a thorough investigation" into the Washington Examiner's workplace culture following accusations of abusive, racist, sexist and homophobic behavior by Harden. Harnden reportedly referred to a female reporter as "Miss f**king tits and a**," and mocked the weight of another female employee, saying she 'stupid b*tch' who was a 'fat f**king waste of food.' He reportedly also privately speculated about the sex lives of employees.
Just prior to Harden's firng, the Examiner's then breaking news editor, Jon Nicosia, had revealed in a first-person essay that he was a former felon "convicted of multiple counts of bank fraud and larceny' for which he 'served five years in state prison." Nicosia was subsequently fired because he had a shared a video with colleagues on Slack, which "appeared to show members of the armed forces on a base gathered around a sex toy as one performed a sexually suggestive act on it." Nicosia denied any wrongdoing, claiming that he had only shared the video with his colleagues "because he thought it might go viral online, stir up a controversy, and become a news story." Upset about his firing, Nicosia then made public via CNN text messages and audio clips of Harnden himself making sexist, racist, and homophobic comments, leading to Harnden's firing as well.

Works

  • Bandit Country -The IRA and South Armagh, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1999.
  • Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan, Quercus, London, 2011.