MA Journalism alumnus wins national broadcasting award

Joshua Brooks, who graduated in December 2024 from our MA/PgDip Journalism (Broadcast) programme, has received the ITV News Broadcast Journalism Award from the National Council of Trained Journalists (NCTJ).

He was the top performer in his cohort for broadcast journalism who sat their official NCTJ Diploma in Journalism exams last year and is now working as an Assistant Producer at ITV News in London.

Joshua freelanced with ITN in London whilst undertaking his studies at Salford last summer before landing his role with ITV in January of this year.

As part of the ITV national news team, he works across various teams, such as the home and foreign news desks in addition to bidding and booking guests for the programme as well as providing social media content for the main ITV platforms and their streaming service ITVX.

In addition to the award, Joshua has received a prize of £250 from ITV News.

Joshua said: “It was a real surprise to receive this award. I worked very hard when I was at Salford, but at the same time, it didn’t feel like work because I had found something that I really loved doing for the first time.”

A late convert to the world of journalism, Joshua initially studied Philosophy at the University of Birmingham for his undergraduate degree but was then intrigued by journalism whilst writing for the student newspaper.

He added: “I applied to the Salford course with some decent writing experience, but I was keen to explore the broadcast route. I was taught a huge amount in a short period of time, and I loved it! It pushed me on to work even harder and get into broadcast journalism as a career.

“Before this, a career in television was never something that crossed my mind. But whilst at Salford, I learned to love the rigour of the journalism, alongside the creativity of making TV. Learning how live TV works, and how packages are edited together was fascinating.”

The individual honour follows on from Joshua being Highly Commended at the 2024 NCTJ Awards for Excellence for his student podcast Tell Us Who You Are.

It is the second time in the last five years that a Salford student or graduate has won the Broadcast Journalism Award after 2019 alumna Sophie Reaper won the award in 2020. The journalist has been GB News’ North West Correspondent since July 2022.