As Senior Managing Editor, Matthew Pennington leads daily newsroom operations and oversees RFA’s investigative unit and English language news. Previously, he served as RFA’s Managing Editor of Southeast Asia. In 2024, he was named Acting Executive Editor.
Matthew joined RFA in December 2018, after a 19-year career with The Associated Press as a reporter and editor. He began his career in Southeast Asia as a U.N. volunteer in Laos, raising awareness about the problem of unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War. He subsequently worked as a correspondent for Agence France-Presse and then the AP, covering Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia. He reported on the Asian financial crisis in Thailand, student protests and Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest in Burma, and the demise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. He then spent five years based in Islamabad, where he became AP bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan. He led the team that won the Society of Professional Journalists award for breaking news for coverage of the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Matthew transferred to AP’s Washington, D.C., bureau in 2011, writing on U.S. policy toward Asia. He was born and educated in England and holds a BA in Ancient History from the University of Bristol and an MA in Political Philosophy from the University of York.