Frank Langfitt
Frank Langfitt is NPR's London correspondent. He covers the UK and Ireland, as well as stories elsewhere in Europe.
Langfitt arrived in London in June 2016. A week later, the UK voted for Brexit. He's been busy ever since, covering the most tumultuous period in British politics in decades. Langfitt has reported on everything from Brexit's economic impact, Chinese influence campaigns and terror attacks to the renewed push for Scottish independence, political tensions in Northern Ireland and Megxit. Langfitt has contributed to NPR podcasts, including Consider This, The Indicator from Planet Money, Code Switch and Pop Culture Happy Hour. He also appears on the BBC and PBS Newshour.
Previously, Langfitt spent five years as an NPR correspondent covering China. Based in Shanghai, he drove a free taxi around the city for a series on a changing China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people. As part of the series, Langfitt drove passengers back to the countryside for Chinese New Year and served as a wedding chauffeur. He expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China (Public Affairs, Hachette).
While in China, Langfitt also reported on the government's infamous "black jails" — secret detention centers — as well as his own travails taking China's driver's test, which he failed three times.
Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He reported from Sudan, covered the civil war in Somalia, and interviewed imprisoned Somali pirates, who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab Spring, Langfitt covered the uprising and crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered coal mine disasters in West Virginia, the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcy of General Motors. His story with producer Brian Reed of how GM failed to learn from a joint-venture factory with Toyota was featured on This American Life and has been taught in business schools at Yale, Penn and NYU.
In 2008, Langfitt covered the Beijing Olympics as a member of NPR's team, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. Langfitt's print and visual journalism have also been honored by the Overseas Press Association and the White House News Photographers Association.
Before coming to NPR, Langfitt spent five years as a correspondent in Beijing for The Baltimore Sun, covering a swath of Asia from East Timor to the Khyber Pass.
Langfitt spent his early years in journalism stringing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and living in Hazard, Kentucky, where he covered the state's Appalachian coalfields for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Prior to becoming a reporter, Langfitt dug latrines in Mexico and drove a taxi in his hometown of Philadelphia. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
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At least ten news organizations have retracted or amended their stories after an NPR investigation showed that a man they featured as a brave Chinese dissident was accused of being a conman.
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A Pennsylvania church just blocks from where then-candidate Donald Trump's would-be assassin lived created a sermon series on the Golden Rule to try to bridge political divisions in its congregation.
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The pastor of a Pennsylvania church not far from where Donald Trump was nearly assassinated is preaching sermons in the theme of "Do Unto Others," as a way to heal his deeply divided community.
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Election officials and experts from more than 60 countries across the globe came to study the U.S. voting system. Hear some interesting perspectives on what they saw.
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More than two dozen local officials in swing states have refused to certify elections in recent years, including after the primary election in Nevada's Washoe County this summer.
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More than two dozen local officials in swing states have refused to certify elections in recent years. A case in Nevada shows attorneys general have the will and tools to keep the process on track.
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The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, which helps members get affordable mortgages, says its 3.7 million members must vote or risk losing membership — and the financial benefits.
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The one-of-a-kind killing of a Kentucky judge, allegedly by the local sheriff, has shaken tight-knit Letcher County, leaving people baffled and unnerved as police try to figure out a motive.
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People in the courtroom wept as the footage was shown during a preliminary hearing for former Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines, who is charged with first-degree murder.