CBS This Morning highlighted a video posted last week by Philip Crowther, who covers the White House. The video shows Crowther reporting for the Associated Press, from the US state of Georgia and Washington DC, in half a dozen languages.
One of the TV programme’s presenters, Anthony Mason, introduced the clip by telling his co-hosts:
“This can be a very hard job sometimes, but I’m going to show you a journalist who’s going to make us all feel inadequate. This journalist posted an impressive video of himself on social media reporting on the US election in 6, count them, 6 languages.”
Mason then continued:
“That’s Philip Crowther speaking French, English and Spanish on different reports. He also shared clips of himself delivering the news in Portuguese, German and Luxembourgish, a language I did not know existed.
“He’s an international affiliate reporter for the Associated Press and the White House correspondent for France 24, a TV network in Paris. The video has more than 2.6m views. According to his bio, Crowther was born in Luxembourg to a British father and a German mother. He is a native speaker of English, German and Luxembourgish. And a fluent speaker of French, Spanish and Portuguese.”
In the chitchat that followed, another presenter, Gayle King, asked in jest:
“But can he speak Pig Latin?”
Mason replied:
“I looked up Luxembourgish, which is, of course, derived from German, and spoken by only 600,000 people.”
King stated:
“I say bravo to him, that’s great!”
Mason concluded:
“It’s hard enough to get this job right in 1 language, but to do it in 6!”
CBS This Morning has had an average of 2.8m viewers in recent weeks.
From Dalton to Washington, here's my coverage for @AP_GMS of last week's events in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Luxembourgish, in that order. pic.twitter.com/P6FGnbcRkr
— Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) January 12, 2021
Crowther is also a freelance correspondent for Luxembourg’s 100,7 public radio. He has worked in Washington since June 2011.