Millions of Arabic audiences have grown acquainted to Egyptian broadcaster Mohammed Seif al-Nasr, who at 1:00 pm GMT delivers a news report on the BBC Arabic television channel. With a calm and maturity that belies his age, the young presenter reports the news with objectivity and displays an adeptness in interviewing his guests, who range from experts to officials to eye-witnesses. Many viewers may not know however that Seif al-Nasr built his career originally as a field journalist, whose sometimes reckless behavior occasionally brought risk to his life. His boldness however in tense areas brought him to prominence and his fluency in Hebrew landed him interviews with late former Israeli President Shimon Peres and former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon. After a long day at work, he sat with Asharq Al-Awsat to discuss journalism and his career at the BBC. The British broadcaster, he said, was a dream of every aspiring Arab journalist. “The only reason that prompted me to leave my country Egypt was the project to set up BBC Arabic. It was an ambitious plan and the sky was the limit for us,” he added. Launched in March 2008, the channel brought together an eager group of journalists from throughout the Arab world under the professional guidance of Salah Najm. “I had the honor of presenting the first news broadcast on the channel,” said Seif al-Nasr. Explaining his fluency in Hebrew, he stated that he studied Middle Eastern studies, including the languages, politics, history and religion of the region. “This opened many doors for me in my line of work … and it helped in my coverage of the Palestinian cause,” he said. He explained that he was consequently dispatched as a reporter at several events in the Palestinian territories, including covering elections and the war in Gaza. Asked what has been the most valuable asset that he acquired from this experience, Seif al-Nasr replied that he is now always chosen by the BBC Arabic to cover developments linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict and others in Israel itself. He revealed that he covered all Israeli elections since coming to work for BBC Arabic, which gave him the opportunity to interview several Israeli officials, including Peres in 2014. In 2013, he interviewed then Defense Minister Yaalon. “This was one of my most important interviews because the official proved to me that the Middle East we are living in today is indeed a new Middle East and the post-Arab Spring region differs from what it was before 2011,” he stated. On his field work, he stressed that it gave him the opportunity to travel to regions that would have not been accessible to him had he not been a journalist. The most significant of these experiences was covering from Kabul the Afghanistan elections of August 2009. “The elections were very important for the country at the time and the capital was rife with dangers,” he recalled. “Danger is a journalist’s constant companion, but our obsession with delivering the truth to the viewer makes us occasionally forget it,” added Seif al-Nasr. “It is only after we leave the danger zones that we realize the threats that were facing us,” he went on to say. He described his experience in Afghanistan as the most dangerous in his career, saying that the journalists were forced to remain in Kabuk or certain other cities in order to preserve their safety. “I insisted however on leaving the capital to come up with reports on people living outside of Kabul,” he said. Now that he is delivering the news from a studio, he stated that finding a balance between covering all the latest developments linked to wars and conflicts, while also reporting on breaking news remains one of his greatest challenges. “This profession creates nervous and psychological stress because it demands complete professionalism and objectivity in reporting wars and oppression,” he remarked. “We are human in the end and committing to objectivity and maintaining a middle ground is a great challenge,” he noted. One of the most difficult moments he experienced as a presenter was acting as moderator for a program in wake of the spread of the image of the drowned Kurdish child that was washed up on a Turkish shore in 2015. He said that the program he was hosting tackled the development, but he had a hard time controlling his feelings and professionalism because he was so shaken by the image. Asked to give advice to aspiring journalists, Seif al-Nasr said: “This is a difficult profession that should only be pursued by those who love it with a passion.” “They must realize that the most important part of this profession is relaying the truth and respecting the viewer. Credibility is important, while fame and financial gain may be nice, but they are secondary,” he added. “The most important asset the journalist can possess is being able to ask the questions whose answers the viewers want to hear,” he stressed.