Alex Platt

Supervising Photojournalist

Alex Platt is an award-winning Photojournalist based in London.
Alex Platt Profile

About

Alex Platt is an award-winning Photojournalist based in London.

Joining CNN in 2006, Platt’s work has documented the fall of the Arab Spring and the rise of the Islamic State, the response to international terrorism and the resultant toll on its many victims.

In 2017, Platt traveled to Libya with Senior International Correspondent Nima Elbagir and producer Raja Razek to investigate reports of African migrants being sold at slave auctions – some for as little as $400. “People for Sale” sparked a global outcry and was instrumental in the passing of United Nations sanctions against six men identified as traffickers by the U.N. Libya Sanctions Committee.

The team’s report was recognized with a 2018 George Polk Award in the Foreign Television Reporting category, the Royal Television Society (RTS) Award for Scoop of the Year, a Golden Nymph Award in the Best TV News Item category at the Monte Carlo TV Festival, the Television Trophy at the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Awards and two Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) awards – The Daily Journalism category and the Judges Impact award.

The report in Libya and a subsequent investigation into child labor in the Republic of The Congo contributed to the 2019 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award given to Nima Elbagir in the investigative category.

In 2019 Platt was part of a CNN team that won plaudits for their year-long investigation into Father Luke Delft: “The case of the predator priest”, a Belgian pedophile priest who was sent to work for an aid organization in Africa, helping vulnerable families, even though his Catholic order knew of his past criminal conviction for abusing children years earlier in Europe.

Platt began his career in TV Broadcasting in 1996 as a freelancer, focusing solely on news after the September 11 attacks and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and was a near-constant presence in Baghdad during the seminal moments of the long occupation of Iraq.

Despite bearing witness to many iconic world events of the last 20 years, it’s the smaller personal moments, documenting the lives of people when they are at their lowest and in need of understanding and sensitivity that resonate the most for Platt, this is where his brand of photojournalism really shines through.