Molly Blackall

Molly Blackall is a 24-year-old journalist specialising in global affairs, who has recently become the i paper’s youngest correspondent. She has already established a reputation for insightful, fresh and compassionate reporting on some of the world’s biggest humanitarian issues.

Molly recently spent three weeks on board a search and rescue ship in the central Mediterranean, producing a powerful series of written stories and video reports on migrants attempting to reach Europe via small boats which brought the crisis into sharp new focus. After undergoing rigorous training, including night drills and online exams, Molly was able to join crews to observe on rescue missions and report first-hand on the crossings. Dozens of interviews, conducted in multiple languages and across several days, shone a rare light upon who is making these crossings and why. Video reports, self-shot, allowed viewers a rare and direct insight into these rescues. By revealing that women are being given emergency abortions at sea after widespread rapes, and how parents frequently lose children while travelling, the project exposed the suffering and exploitation migrants can face on the journey to Europe. It examined the approach of the UK and EU to migrant crossings, reporting on the efficacy of the Government’s Rwanda policy and exploring Europe’s alleged involvement in human rights violations against migrants. Molly’s reports challenged Brussels on its relationship with the Libyan coastguard and forced the UK to publicly clarify its stance on the treatment of migrants in the North African country. Molly’s reports made the front page of the i's newspaper and website and were picked up by the BBC and Al-Jazeera. The reports also spread widely on social media and were viewed by more than 5 million people and shared by 8,000 readers. Outside of the Mediterranean, Molly has been integral to the i’s coverage of the Ukraine war, producing compelling interviews with those fleeing besieged Mariupol, tracking bomb clearance efforts in crucial food-producing regions and revealing that Ukrainian women are giving birth prematurely as a result of war. Molly also travelled to Calais to report on Ukrainian refugees attempting to cross to the UK, meeting the young families desperate to reach safety, exploring racism experienced by people of colour on their journey out of Ukraine, and successfully locating an elusive UK visa processing centre ahead of any other news outlet. Back in the UK, she has followed the plight of Ukrainian refugees through a series of stories about those battling red tape under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. After following their story for several weeks, she produced a video report and written story about one young Ukrainian family as they began their new lives in Liverpool. Molly has also sought to shine a light on areas which frequently don’t make the headlines, writing about Somali girls forced out of school and into marriage and doctors treating malnutrition on mattresses under trees due to the growing famine in the Horn of Africa, as well as sharing powerful stories of those affected by the war in Yemen.