The following is mirrored from its source at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/correspondents/newsid_2625000/2625875.stm



     BBC Correspondents                  [Kate Adie in the Gulf]

     Kate Adie                           When Kate Adie arrives at the
                                         scene, soldiers know they are
     It became something of a joke       in trouble
     in the British army that when
     Kate Adie arrived on the scene,     
     the soldiers knew they were in      
     trouble.                            Life as a correspondent
                                         
     The BBC's chief news                "I don't find an advantage
     correspondent became one of the      or disadvantage in being
     best-known faces on television       a woman when reporting.
     for her reporting from the           What little advantages
     major wars of recent years.          there might be in some
     They include the Gulf War, the       instances is cancelled
     conflicts in the former              out by the basic lack of
     Yugoslavia, Albania, Rwanda,         lavatories round the
     China and Sierra Leone.              world for women. It may
                                          seem trivial but when
     It cannot have occurred to the       you're in a frontline
     23-year-old from Sunderland,         unit with 2,000 men in
     with her degree in Scandinavian      the desert in Saudi Arabia
     Studies, that this was where         which is flat and has no
     she was heading when she joined      sand dunes, no trees and
     the BBC in 1968 as a studio          no bushes, there were a
     technician in local radio.           number of practical
					  difficulties to say the
     Even when she began making 	  least."
     programmes as a producer, she	 	    --Kate Adie
     started well away from news, in
     farming and arts programmes for
     Radio Bristol. She moved on to
     direct outside television            Kate Adie      [Kate Adie]
     broadcasts for sport and             talks to
     religious programmes.                Woman's Hour about her life
                                          in broadcasting.
     She began work as a journalist
     in regional TV in Plymouth,
     Southampton and Brighton,
     joining BBC TV News in London
     in 1979. Although she covered
     some overseas stories, she also
     spent two years as a court
     correspondent.

     Her coverage of the 1980 siege
     of the Iranian embassy changed
     all that. It brought her to
     prominence as one of the few
     women reporting difficult and
     dangerous stories at the time.
     She herself describes the turn
     her career took as largely
     accidental.

     "I never desired to go into war
     zones," she says. "I never had
     any thought about it. It sort
     of just happened as part of the
     job."

     Kate Adie became the BBC's
     chief news correspondent in
     1989. She again came to the
     fore when covering the brutal
     suppression of the student
     uprising in Tiananmen Square.

     For this, as well as other
     major stories, she has won an
     impressive array of awards and
     a clutch of honorary degrees.
     Her honours include three RTS
     awards, the Bafta Richard
     Dimbleby Award, and the
     Broadcasting Press Guild's
     Award for Outstanding
     Contribution to Broadcasting.
     She was awarded an OBE in 1993.

     In early 2003, Kate Adie
     announced that she was leaving
     front-line reporting, and her
     job as chief news
     correspondent, to concentrate
     on freelance presenting for the
     BBC.

     She continues to present From
     Our Own Correspondent, on BBC
     Radio 4, and to report for BBC
     World TV.



     Copyright © 2003 MMIII
     Reprinted for Fair Use Only.



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