Tom Clark (journalist)
Tom Clark is a Canadian television journalist. He has been a substitute anchor for CTV National News, and host of Power Play, a political program on CTV News Channel. He is currently the chief political correspondent for Global News, and host of their political program The West Block.[1]
Personal
Clark was born in the early 1950s (1952 or 1953) to Joseph Adair Porter Clark and Patrica Grant and raised in Toronto and graduated from Upper Canada College in 1971.[2] He is fluently bilingual.[2] Clark went to Carleton University to study journalism, but left for a news job in Montreal.[3]
Clark comes from a family of journalists:
- great-grandfather Joseph Thomas Clark was managing editor of the Toronto Star and Saturday Night
- grandfather Joseph William Greig Clark (1896-1956) RAF aviator and reporter for the Toronto Star
- father Joseph Adair Porter Clark (1921-2013) was the founder, CEO and President of Canada NewsWire[4]
- great-uncle Gregory Clark (1892-1977) was an acclaimed writer and journalist with both the Toronto Star and the Toronto Telegram
- uncle James Murray Clark (son of Greg) was also a reporter with the Star (d. 1944)
Besides journalism, Clark is a licensed pilot and flies a floatplane.[2]
Career
Clark served as CTV's China Bureau Chief in 1983-85. He was among the first to cover the Ethiopian famine in 1984, was in Berlin in 1989 to witness the fall of the wall, and was the only Canadian reporter in Yugoslavia when NATO launched aerial war against Serbia in 1999. In all Clark has covered six theatres of war. He was the first Canadian Journalist to ever interview U.S. President George W. Bush one on one on television. He also hosted, and served as senior correspondent on CTV's W-FIVE for eight years. He has covered every federal election since 1974.
On September 7, 2010 CTV announced that Clark was leaving the network to pursue other opportunities.[5] He had been considered one of the frontrunners to succeed Lloyd Robertson as CTV National News anchor; with his departure coming shortly after Lisa LaFlamme was named Robertson's successor, it was widely speculated that Clark's departure was tied to having been passed over.[6] However, Clark later said that he was "neither angry nor bitter" about the choice of LaFlamme, and that CTV decided to buy out his contract.[7]
On September 1, 2011, Clark was appointed chief political correspondent for Global Television Network.
Global News announced Clark will retire as of Jan. 1, 2017, ending his 40-plus year career in journalism. [8]
References
- ↑ "Tom Clark joins Global News". Global News. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
- 1 2 3 "Tom Clark". Global News. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
- ↑ "Tom Clark Will Be Missed". James Bawden. 7 September 2010. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
- ↑ "In Memory of Joseph Adair Porter Clark". Dignity Memorial. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
- ↑ "Newsman Tom Clark leaves CTV". cbc.ca, September 7, 2010.
- ↑ "Veteran host, reporter Tom Clark leaving CTV". Toronto Star, September 7, 2010.
- ↑ Mary Ormsby (2010-09-20). "Lisa LaFlamme: From danger zones to a desk". Toronto Star. Retrieved 2010-09-21.
- ↑ "Tom Clark, host of ‘The West Block’, to end iconic journalism career". Global News, November 28, 2016.