Pınar Atalay

Pınar Atalay — Biography

Pinar Atalay was born on 27 April 1978 in Lemgo, West Germany, to Turkish immigrant parents, and is a German journalist and radio and television presenter of Turkish descent. After finishing high school she ran a boutique in Lemgo for a year, then interned at Radio NRW and Radio Lippe before working for a time as an early-morning presenter at the local station Antenne Münster.

She went on to host Cosmo TV on WDR Fernsehen and presented regular news and special programs for ARD-aktuell on Das Erste, while also working as a reporter and presenter for NDR Fernsehen, NDR Radio and Radio Bremen. From 2010 she presented programs on Phoenix, and by 2013 her presence on German state television was drawing attention in the Turkish press. A 2018 Forsa Institute survey named her one of Germany's most trusted news presenters, and from 2014 she wrote articles for the business magazine Plusminus.

In June 2021 private broadcaster RTL announced she would join as a news anchor that August, and ahead of the 2021 federal election she co-moderated, with Peter Kloeppel, one of the televised debates among the chancellor candidates. That same year she became the target of right-wing backlash and racist commentary in Germany after making an on-air announcement in Turkish. In January 2017 she gave birth to a daughter.