Picture ITN

Former ITN reporter Ken Rees has died from cancer. He was aged 76.

Rees covered stories around the world including Beirut, The Falklands, and the 1991 Gulf War.

He also worked in ITN’s Washington office during the 1980s.

Rees – who stood at six foot five inches – was named reporter of the year by Royal Television Society in 1986.

The judges praised him for “his ability to report effectively and sympathetically on every kind of story from hard news to personal human tragedy”.

His former ITN colleague John Toker said:

“Ken Rees had a voracious appetite for a story and was ultra-competitive in his approach, an attitude which made him beloved of his ITN news editors and producers and feared by his opposites at the BBC and the American news organisations.

“The fact that he stood 6ft 5in tall and, unusually for the time, wore a beard, meant he could impose himself and take charge of any media scrum.

And he often did.”

Rees is survived by his wife Lynne, son Christian, daughter Samantha, and three grandchildren.