Julie McCarthy

NPR Biography
Foreign Correspondent, South America
NPR (National Public Radio)
635 Massachusetts Ave., NWWashington, D.C. 20001
In 2005, Julie McCarthy became NPR's correspondent based in South America. Previously, she covered the Middle East for NPR beginning in 2002, when she was dispatched to cover the Israeli incursion into the West Bank.
Before covering the Middle East, McCarthy was the London Bureau Chief for NPR, a position that frequently took her far from her post to cover stories that span the globe. McCarthy spent five weeks in Iran during the war in Afghanistan, covered the re-election of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and traveled to the Indian island nation of Madagascar to report on the political and ecological developments there. Following the terror attacks on the United States she was the lead reporter assigned to investigate al Qaeda in Europe.
In 1994, McCarthy became the first staff correspondent to head NPR's Tokyo bureau. She covered a range of stories in Japan with distinction, including the Kobe earthquake of 1995, the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the turmoil over U.S. troops on Okinawa. Her coverage of Japan won the East-West Center's Mary Morgan Hewett Award for the Advancement of Journalism.
McCarthy has also traveled extensively throughout Asia. Her coverage of the Asian economic crisis earned her the 1998 Overseas Press Club of America Award. She arrived in Indonesia weeks before the fall of Asia's longest-running ruler and chronicled a nation in chaos as President Suharto stepped from power.
Prior to her assignment in Asia, McCarthy was the foreign editor for Europe as well as Africa. She served as the Senior Washington Editor during the Persian Gulf War; NPR was honored with a Silver Baton in the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for its coverage of that conflict. McCarthy was awarded a Peabody, two additional Overseas Press Club Awards, and the Ohio State Award in her capacity as European and African Editor.
She was a Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii in 1994.
She was selected to spend the 2002-2003 academic year at Stanford University, winning a place in the Knight Journalism Fellowship Program.
McCarthy comes to journalism by way of the law; she is also an attorney. She has worked for NPR since 1986.
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