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Mike McCarthy

Mike McCarthy

As Sky's Northern Bureau Chief, Mike has been involved in every significant story in his region.

Mike has reported on an extensive range of stories, including live from the Hillsborough disaster and from Kabul during the war in Afghanistan – which saw him being shot at just before he went live on air from a rooftop. During the second Iraq War, he covered developments in Israel, Kuwait and Iraq.  His international reporting includes the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and a spell in Washington DC during which he covered the massacre of children at an Amish school in Pennsylvania. Mike and his team were the first television journalists on the scene of the Cumbrian floods of 2009. His reporting in the north of England includes events such as the disappearance of schoolgirl Shannon Matthews, a visit to Tony Blair’s constituency by President George W. Bush and the hunt for Raoul Moat.

Educated in Derbyshire, Mike studied journalism before working as a reporter for a local newspaper and then commercial radio.  He moved to work as a reporter, producer, and later a presenter at BBC Leeds where he was named BT Journalist of the Year (North).  In 1999 he moved to become an assistant news editor at BBC News 24.

Mike was born in Chesterfield.