Trevor McDonald is the comforting face of nighttime news. As Big Ben chimes ten o’clock, McDonald looks up from his news desk and, with considerable gravitas, reads out the news headlines for Independent Television News (ITN). Although this act is undertaken in newsrooms across Britain, he occupies a very particular position in the media firmament. McDonald not only is one of the most respected elder statesmen of news broadcasting, regardless of race, but also has been an abidingly positive role model for countless young Black Britons growing up in a society where skin color still matters. He was born in Trinidad and came to Britain in 1969 to work for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service, joining ITN a few years later as its first Black reporter. McDonald has quietly got on with doing his job, courting neither controversy nor fame but a settled life doing what he does best. Because of his extreme visibility as, still, one of a few Black media professionals who are regularly on television, he has been criticized for not using his privileged position more overtly to combat racism and discrimination. However, as he argued in the Radio Times, although he is aware of “racial undercurrents in this country . . . I have been very lucky and found none at all.”

His most important contribution to television is probably his exemplary professionalism as a Black newscaster and journalist who manifests a positive role to younger generations, in counterpoint to many of the more stereotyped media portraits of Black communities in Western societies. He also offers a professional image to those who know nothing of Black people other than their vicarious experiences of television. As evidence to his illustrious career, he was awarded TRIC’s “Newscaster of the Year” and, in 1993, Order of the British Empire. He was knighted in 1999. Although he will probably retire in 2005, Sir Trevor’s enduring appeal among ITV’s news watchers has enabled him to sign a new contract that once again makes him the face of ITN’s revived News at Ten bulletin.