The veteran television journalist Dermot Murnaghan has died at the age of 68, a year after revealing that he had been diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. His family said he passed away peacefully at his home in North London, with them by his side, marking the loss of a familiar presence who anchored British news programmes across five decades. Tributes have come from broadcasters and politicians, with colleagues remembering him as "peerless in the presenter chair" and a "legend of news".

Born in England and raised in Northern Ireland, Murnaghan began his career at local newspapers before moving to Channel 4 News and fronting ITV shows including The Big Story and News at 10 from 1993 to 1997. He joined the BBC in 2002 as a main host of BBC Breakfast, the Six O'Clock News and the Ten O'Clock News, presented the quiz show Eggheads for 11 years from 2003, and was one of the faces of Sky News from 2007 to 2023. In 1998 he won a Royal Television Society award for an interview with Peter Mandelson, who resigned the following day. After his diagnosis last summer he became a vocal advocate for prostate cancer screening, urging men over 50, those in high-risk groups or with symptoms to get tested and warning that the disease can progress rapidly without obvious signs.