| 1 | | | Chinese soldiers were firing on a crowd in Peking. 'The people did not know or care |
| | | who I was; they protected me because of what I represented,' says the British journalist |
| | | caught up in the chaos. 'They saved my life again and again, screaming out, "The BBC, the |
| | | BBC",' |
| 2 | 5 | | But back home the reporter has become almost as newsworthy as the message. And |
| | | Kate Adie regrets this. ' It is unhealthy to associate an individual journalist with a story. |
| | | People should not think about me. What matters is the story I'm telling them. ' |
| 3 | | | Kate appears on TV from trouble spots around the world, her very presence |
| | | seeming to indicate that something very important is going on . It is a remarkable position |
| 10 | | for a woman who became a journalist by accident, is entirely without ambition, and says |
| | | that she never wanted to be famous and doesn't like it now that she is. 'I find it intensely |
| | | embarrassing when people stare at me in the supermarket.' |
| 4 | | | Kate joined the BBC some twenty years ago because the job sounded like fun. The |
| | | term 'sexual discrimination' hadn't even been invented yet but was a fact of every woman's |
| 15 | | life. In her first job, as a junior reporter, Kate took for granted the hostile reactions, the |
| | | jokes and the teasing that were the usual reactions to any woman who turned up with a |
| | | tape recorder. Not a member of the National Union of Journalists and not a man, she |
| | | hardly had a chance to work in the newsroom. Now, at 45, Kate Adie is the Chief News |
| | | Correspondent for the BBC. |
| 5 | 20 | | At any moment Kate may be sent halfway around the world. She drives off to the |
| | | airport cancelling her dates by carphone on the way. The BBC delivers a stack of |
| | | background reading about the country she is being sent to for the plane journey. How else |
| | | would she be able to make intelligent conversation when she got there, knowing nobody |
| | | except members of the international circus of news reporters? |
| 6 | 25 | | 'One develops a system of "sniffing the air", finding out what people are saying at |
| | | meetings, in the street - and as a woman I have the advantage of blending into the daily |
| | | scene. I did some of my best research in basement shops in Beirut while we were being |
| | | hammered to hell by enemy bombs.' |
| 7 | | | An unsuitable job for a woman? 'Absolutely not. I have never been in a single war |
| 30 | | or any other dangerous situation where half the people present weren't female. Who is |
| | | providing the food, consoling the relatives? It's always the women. Usually it's only the |
| | | people with the power who are men: the army, police, security people - the ones with the |
| | | guns.' |
| 8 | | | One can't help wondering why she does it. The answer is given with great conviction. |
| 35 | | Because information is everything, information and understanding. My job is to go there, |
| | | to see, to listen and to say it. That two-minute talk to the camera is the only information |
| | | that a lot of people get. It has to be of the highest, clearest, most accurate order.' |
| 9 | | | However, Kate has now become the victim of inaccurate reporters herself. It makes |
| | | her even more determined to keep her private affairs private. 'All women in TV have the |
| 40 | | same problem. The popular newspapers are very destructive about our personal lives. We |
| | | are literally persecuted. It makes me extraordinarily cautious, if only to make sure my |
| | | friends don't suffer from knowing me.' |
| 10 | | | A more obvious pressure on women in TV is to conform to the glamorous media |
| | | stereotype. Kate worries that some younger women, seeing her as a role model, get the |
| 45 | | wrong idea about what she does. 'It's not a glamorous job. You have to be able to handle |
| | | confrontation, lots of aggression. You must be tough. Of course, one goes to interesting |
| | | places and meets interesting people, but it's physically demanding and very exhausting.' |
| | | |
| | | from 'Cosmopolitan', June 1990 |
