Barbara Plett

Barbara Plett Usher is a Canadian-born UK journalist with experience in the Middle East and the UN. She has worked for the BBC in Jerusalem, Islamabad and the United Nations.

Education

Plett Usher graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Personal life

Plett Usher was married to Graham Usher, the former Jerusalem correspondent of The Economist magazine. He died on August 8, 2013, at age 54 of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.

Career

She joined the BBC as a freelancer from Cairo in 1995 and became its Middle East correspondent by 2000.

She then went on to cover the death of the Syrian President Hafez al Assad in 2000 and to do much reporting under siege in Ramallah in 2002. Her career took her to Iraq in 2003.

Plett Usher worked as BBC correspondent in Jerusalem before being transferred to Islamabad in 2009. She was the BBC's United Nations correspondent since at least 2012

Yasser Arafat

During the BBC programme From Our Own Correspondent broadcast on 30 September 2004, Plett Usher said she cried when she saw Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat being taken to hospital during his terminal illness. This led to suggestions that the BBC was biased.