Global news reporter still remembers his roots in the Vale

By Marcus Stead – News Reporter

Marcus Stead 30/10/2025

8 minutes read

A NEWSREADER and foreign correspondent for a leading global news channel has reflected on his formative years in the Vale.

On Friday, 10th October 1986, the birth of Joel Flynn at St David’s Hospital in Cardiff was announced live on BBC Radio Wales, where his father, Mike, hosted a daily show.

| Joel Flynn outside No10 Downing Street.

Joel spent the first few years of his life living among spacious surroundings in Flemingston with his father, his late mother Jacqui, and his younger brother, Luke, who arrived in 1988. Joel looks back on his early years with great fondness: “I can clearly remember how much space we had in Flemingston, we had loads of room to roam around and play.

“It was only when I began living in a city as an adult that I truly appreciated how lucky I was to grow up there,” he said.

Joel’s father joined BBC Radio Wales at its launch in November 1978, where he presented the mid-morning show for around five years, before moving to mid-afternoons. Joel said that having a father who was so well-known made for an interesting upbringing: “Mike Flynn was a very big name in the Welsh media during the 1980s. I remember lots of people coming around to our house, but I didn’t know whether they were celebrities or not.

“In those days, the astrologer Russell Grant and his partner, Doug lived in Barry, and they were family friends. My father enjoyed some wonderful times with them. I remember my dad was always being invited to open things, the Bonfire Night fireworks display at Romilly Park was usually launched by him.

“I didn’t think of my dad as a celebrity, but he’s always been a good talker and he seemed to connect with people. The intimacy of radio is something that’s very, very hard to replicate in other formats.

“My dad is a big aviation fan, and people may well remember the light aircraft he owned with his name on the tail. We seemed to be going here, there and everywhere when I was a child. It wasn’t until much later that I grasped most children didn’t get to fly in a light aircraft very often, if at all,” he said.

Joel’s life changed when Mike quit his radio show and embarked on a flying adventure around the world with his then-wife and two children. The events of the months that followed had a profound impact on Joel that were to shape his future life. He said: “I admire what my dad did in resigning from a well-paid, high-profile job, but he felt the show had run its course and he had an ambition to see the world.

“We started by flying along The Great Lakes, we saw Hawaii, the Deep South, California, then we spent time flying through China, where there’s a photo of me and my dad in Tiananmen Square a few months after the massacre.

“We flew through, and spent time in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, then we settled in Perth, Western Australia for a couple of years.

“I remember our house in Perth very well, it was similar to our place in Flemingston in terms of the space we had to play, as little boys we loved being outside, but the weather was definitely better in Perth!

“A memory that has stuck in my mind is coming home one day to find a massive bush on fire!”

| A young Joel with his father in Flemingston.

The family returned to the UK in the 1990s, and Joel went on to attend Wymondham College, a state boarding school in Norfolk. Joel says the vast travelling he did during his early life meant he adapted well to boarding school: “I never suffered from homesickness, in a sense it probably did me good to be there, because my parents’ marriage was breaking down and I was protected from that.

“I made many good friends at school and we formed close bonds. We got up to mischief but we had a lot of fun,” he said.

After completing his schooling, Joel took a year out, where he worked at a cocktail bar in Norwich before going on to spend four months in Scotland. He then moved to SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) University of London, where he completed a degree in Politics and Developmental Studies, before doing an MA in Multi-Media Journalism at Bournemouth University.

In the years that followed, Joel worked extensively for news agency Reuters in various production roles and as an on-screen reporter. It was while employed by Reuters that he first appeared on TRT World, the Turkish-owned global news channel where he now works full-time: “In 2016, I was covering the attempted coup against President Erdogan, I was in a crowded public square and I very nearly ended up in a Turkish prison.

“There were secret police everywhere. They tend to avoid punching you in places that show up on TV, but let’s just say I had a sore groin for a few days afterwards. Even so, I filed my reports and I also covered the story for Al Jazeera,” he said.

In 2018, Joel moved to Hong Kong, where he continued to work for Reuters and his wife, Pauline Lockwood, was a senior news editor for CNN.

During 2019 and 2020, there were widespread protests in Hong Kong against plans to allow criminals and those accused of specific crimes to be extradited to mainland China, though the civil unrest was in part due to the wider erosion of liberties by Chinese authorities running the former British colony. Joel covered the protests for a number of news outlets that used Reuters services, including ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

The pandemic was a particularly difficult time for Joel and his family: “Hong Kong had a zero Covid policy, meaning that not only would the person who tested positive be quarantined, anyone who’d been in contact with them would also be quarantined.

“Somebody in the gym we used tested positive, so that was it, we were taken to a quarantine facility where Pauline and I, along with our daughter Eva, who was only about a year old, had to stay for 14 days.

“We were confined to a very small flat, essentials were delivered through the window in small plastic bags by staff in full hazmat suits, and we had to abide by all sorts of strict rules, such as how widely we could open the windows.”

The couple’s second daughter, Chloe, was born three years ago, and they decided the time was right for a return to the UK so they could be closer to their families: “My mum had passed away a while beforehand, and on Boxing Day 2022 my dad suffered a brain haemorrhage while in Thailand.

“He had months of intense therapy but by the following summer he was recovering well and he’s very much back to being his old lively self now, but events like that remind you of what’s important in life. Pauline also feels the same way about her family, and we want our daughters to be close to their grandparents,” he said.

In autumn 2023, the couple settled in Ealing, and Pauline transferred to CNN’s London base, while Joel took a job with TRT World as a Europe correspondent and newsreader.

One of Joel’s most challenging assignments was in April 2024, where he anchored TRT World’s rolling coverage of the Iranian strikes on Israel from his hotel base in Jerusalem.

Joel has spent much of 2025 in Ukraine, where he has reported from the frontline of the conflict and conveyed the impact war has on the lives of ordinary people. He said: “News coverage is often too top-down. I believe in the power of storytelling. News is about people, you have to show how things are happening and how they affect people.

| Joel Flynn on his latest assignment in Ukraine.

“That’s what I try to do and I really take that to heart when I cover things. The power of one person’s story can make a viewer relate to what’s happening in a way talking about politics and diplomacy just doesn’t.

“On TRT World, we are a bit more graphic in the content we allow to go on air compared to some of our more established rivals, particularly when it comes to our coverage from Gaza.

“My colleagues and I are not trying to tell people what to think, but it’s indisputably true that large numbers of innocent people are dying, homes are being destroyed, and conditions in Gazan medical facilities are dreadful.”

Since the turn of the millennium, experienced war correspondents such as Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times and ITN’s Terry Lloyd have been killed while reporting from war zones, and Joel is very much aware of the risks his job entails.

Joel also believes it is important that journalists working in conflict zones are aware of the impact it can have on their own mental health: “This is an area that’s talked about more than it used to be, but it’s still not discussed enough. I attended the Media Strong conference at the University of London in July, which was all about the mental wellbeing of those working in the media.

“You have to be a human first and a journalist second. I think by pretending you haven’t been affected, you’re denying the reality of the situation in a way that doesn’t do justice to the story, and it’s disingenuous.

“I’m not somebody to say I have all the answers, but by writing, by thinking, by reflecting, and by giving myself space, I’m looking after my own mental health.

“My wife, working on the production side at CNN, was traumatised by video footage from Gaza that was too strong to broadcast.

“How do I cope? I’d be lying if I said alcohol wasn’t a part of it as a coping mechanism, I think it’s a cultural thing as much as anything, but I think you have to talk about it and not be ashamed of saying the things you’ve seen are upsetting and they’ve affected you. It’s not solely about death, it’s about suffering and it’s about empathy,” he said.

Reflecting on his Welsh roots and early life in the Vale, Joel says he feels a strong affinity with the area: “My father was originally from Ruabon in north Wales, and I have wonderful, happy memories of my early life in the Vale of Glamorgan.

“For some reason, I’m drawn to Welsh people by accident. Some of my closest friends at university and during my career have been Welsh.

“Answering the question ‘where are you from?’ is not easy for me, because I’ve travelled around so much, but yes, I consider myself Welsh, and I feel a strong connection and affinity with the people of Wales,” he said.

By Marcus Stead – News Reporter

News, Letters, Sport and advertising are welcomed by the Glamorgan Star – the largest newspaper or magazine in the Vale of Glamorgan. Contact us today here.

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