The former BBC and ITN presenter Peter Sissons has died at the age of 77, following a career in which he reported around the world and hosted many of the UK’s most prominent news programmes.

A statement from his agent confirmed Sissons died peacefully on Tuesday night in Maidstone hospital, Kent. It said: “His wife and three children were with him and wish to pass on their thanks to the hospital staff who were so caring and fought gallantly to save him to the end.”

Born in Liverpool in 1942, Sissons attended schools alongside three future members of the Beatles, before going on to study at the University of Oxford. After graduation, he joined ITN as a trainee in the 1960s. He was shot in both legs while in Biafra reporting on the Nigerian civil war. In the following years he would focus on presenting the news, rising to become a host of afternoon bulletins on ITV.

He helped host the first episode of Channel 4 News in 1982, becoming its lead presenter. After conducting a combative interview with an Iranian diplomat about the fatwa issued to Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satantic Verses, he was warned by the British security services that they believed his life was in danger. This resulted in his family being put under 24-hour personal protection.

Sissons was poached by the BBC in 1989 to take charge of Question Time and present news bulletins, before becoming the corporation’s main evening news programme presenter for much of the 1990s and early 2000s.

He found himself at the centre of one the BBC’s more bizarre crises when he faced tabloid hostility for wearing a burgundy rather than black tie when he announced the death of the Queen Mother to the nation.

After leaving the corporation in 2009, he became one of a number of former prominent newsreaders who took the opportunity to repeatedly criticise his former employer, accusing of it of leftwing bias and excessive political correctness while expressing his exasperation with its bureaucracy.

He became a prominent external critic of the BBC’s decision to accept the growing scientific consensus on the severity of the climate crisis, writing that the “BBC never at any stage gave equal space to the opponents of the consensus”. Sissons suggested that producers spent too long reading the Guardian’s science coverage rather than seeking alternative views.

The BBC director general, Tony Hall, said: “Peter Sissons was one of the great television figures of his time – as an interviewer, presenter and world-class journalist. During his distinguished career he was one of the most recognisable and well-respected faces of television news.

“He was always a great person to be with and to work with. He will be missed by his many friends and colleagues, and our thoughts are with his family.”