Kira Kay Kira Kay is the founder of the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR), a non-profit news organization dedicated to the coverage of “overlooked” foreign issues and regions. As the primary on-air correspondent and producer for the BIR, she regularly reports for PBS NewsHour and other PBS and cable outlets. Recently Kay produced a three-story series from Liberia looking at post-conflict reconstruction and remaining fragilities, broadcast during that country’s 2011 elections. Last year she obtained a rare journalist visa to report from Burma on the political changes coming to that country and the campaign of Aung San Suu Kyi.   Kay’s reporting on the conflict in Northern Uganda earned the Robert F. Kennedy Award for International Journalism, a first place National Headliner Award and two Emmy Award nominations, including for best story of the year.  In 2004, Kira received an Emmy nomination for her work reporting on the Darfur crisis for CBS News 60 Minutes. In 2002, she was one of only a handful of American journalists allowed access to the war-torn province of Aceh, Indonesia, and returned to Aceh immediately after the tsunami in late 2004. In 2005, Kira consulted for the New York Times on their official submission to the PBS America at the Crossroads series, "Indonesia: Struggle for the Soul of Islam". In 2004, Kira was awarded a Pew Journalism Fellowship in residence at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where she focused on war on terror operations in the Asia Pacific region. In 2003, Kira completed her Master’s Degree in foreign policy at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. As part of a research team sponsored by the United Nations, she traveled to Sierra Leone to examine security threats and post-conflict reconstruction. As a Fulbright scholar in Southeast Asia from 2001-2002, Kira covered various regional stories for American news outlets, including the rise of regional terror networks. From 1992 to 2001 Kira worked for ABC News, producing for the magazine shows Primetime Live and 20/20. Assignments included an hour-long documentary on death row in Angola, Louisiana; a personal history of a small Ukrainian village and its residents during the holocaust; an investigation into the early release policy of the Los Angeles jails system; and the story of an Amish community changed by the arrival of its first black resident. Kira is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a fellow of the US-Japan Foundation Leadership Program.
Kira Kay and Jason Maloney, Co-Founders
The BIR was founded in 2006 by two longtime network news producers who recognized the diminishing supply of international news content on American television. The BIR starts with the premise that only a truly informed public can realize its full potential and that now is not a time when we can afford to avert our eyes from global developments that increasingly impact us at home. Our name draws on the legacy of the old bureau system run by the networks all around the world until severe cutbacks in the 1990s. We hope that through our productions we can replace a fraction of the excellent work they provided to us for decades. Read our Executive Summary.http://thebir.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/BIREXECUTIVESUMMARY.pdfshapeimage_6_link_0
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Jason Maloney Jason Maloney is the founder of the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR) and an award-winning cameraman, editor and news and documentary producer specializing in foreign affairs coverage. His work has appeared on ABC, CBC, CBS, CNN, Discovery, HDNet, PBS, Nytimes.com and Time.com. In the past four years, Jason has reported for PBS NewsHour from Kenya, India, Northern Ireland, Myanmar, Thailand, Liberia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, East Timor and the Canadian sub-Arctic. In 2009, Jason produced an investigation on UN peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for Now on PBS. In 2008, he reported on the breakaway region of Abkhazia and the Russia/Georgia War. Earlier that year, he shot, edited and produced an Emmy-winning report for Now on PBS on the rise of India’s middle class. Uganda’s Silent War, which Jason produced, shot and edited in 2007 for PBS Newshour and HDNet World Report won the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the National Headliner Award and two Emmy nominations. From 2005 to early 2006 Jason developed and served as editorial producer on a DuPont Award-winning documentary for the NY Times and the CBC on nuclear proliferation and the AQ Khan network. In the summer of 2004, Jason traveled to the Darfur region of Sudan to report for the CBS News program 60 Minutes. His footage captured some of the first video evidence of atrocities committed within Darfur itself. From 2002 to 2003, Jason worked with an investigative unit at New York Times Television co-productions for PBS Frontline. While based in Southeast Asia in 2001-2002, Jason produced, shot and edited "A Dirty War" for PBS Now with Bill Moyers on the civil war in Aceh, Indonesia. In 1999, he produced his first independent documentary while on a Pew Journalism Fellowship in Guinea-Bissau and France. From 1996 to 2001 Jason worked at ABC News Primetime Live, with assignments that took him from Siberia to Yemen to the Deep South. "The Unwanted Children of Russia" won the DuPont, Overseas Press Club, and RFK awards. "Germ Warfare: Weapons of Terror" and "Attack on the USS Cole" both won the New York Festivals Award. Jason holds a BA from Dartmouth College and a Masters from the LSE in International Relations. His first book, Your America: Democracy's Local Heroes, was published July, 2008 by Palgrave-McMillan. In addition to his reporting work, Jason is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.