Reporter Who Speaks Six Different Languages Explains How He Does It In First Interview Since Going Viral

Associated Press correspondent Philip Crowther reflected on his viral video reporting on the crisis in Ukraine in six different languages in a new interview.

Crowther went viral this week over a montage of his reporting on Ukraine in English, Luxembourgish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.

NewsNation host and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams offered his own attempt at multilingualism on Wednesday night as he welcomed Crowther onto his show for his first interview since becoming a Twitter sensation.

Asked if he knew whether his montage would get the attention that it did, Crowther spoke of the similar montages he has made of himself before while out on assignment.

It’s always interesting to see where these things travel and who picks up on it. This one was actually pretty slow in how it developed. For the first half a day or so, it didn’t get much traction. Why should it? But then, one or two media personalities, maybe a film director here and there, a few other of my peers re-tweeted this and then I lost complete control over it. It’s been a pretty relentless few days, at least when you look at my phone. It’s been vibrating rather a lot, to a lot of notifications, but you know, I’m not complaining.

Crowther said he was “quite grateful” for the positive response he has been getting since “a lot of people go viral for the wrong reasons, for doing something silly or stupid.” He fielded several questions from Abrams about the perils of multi-lingual reporting.

“Do you get more nervous reporting in some languages than others?” Abrams asked.

“I’m more nervous doing this,” Crowther replied.

After Crowther explained how his upbringing enabled him to become multilingual, Abrams asked “is it odd being a polyglot celebrity?”

“Yeah. It’s weird. I didn’t know I was,” Crowther said. “But, you know, I’m grateful for it. It’s a nice thing to experience its. It’s going viral, I think, for the right reasons. There are a lot of people commenting on the fact that they’d like to maybe learn another language, seeing what they saw in that video, there’s a lot of really nice respect from from colleagues in our industry. It’s very nice to see.”

Watch above, via NewsNation.