News release 25 August 2007

Kate Adie brings the frontline to Festival of Politics

Broadcaster and journalist Kate Adie looked back on her career before a full chamber at the Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics.

After finishing university with a degree in Scandinavian Studies and with no real job prospects Adie confessed that she had entered journalism out of “sheer desperation” rather than vocational calling.

A distinguished career covering conflict and turmoil around the globe began however, with a BBC local radio reporter’s job that also involved “feeding the station cat” and nailing down the studio carpet.

Chaired by Peter MacMahon of the Scotsman newspaper, Adie covered the culture of 24 hour rolling news programmes and a media industry that has become dominated by the motivation of profit. “What’s happening to TV isn’t British, it’s worldwide … what’s going on worldwide is this huge fascination with the media as something which will produce whacking great profits”.

Taking questions from the audience Adie spoke of her optimism and faith in human behaviour even in the bleakest of circumstances. “During that dreadful time [Tiananmen Square] there were people who grabbed hold of our hands, who didn’t speak a word of English and pulled us into doorways knowing we were foreign reporters and they risked their lives to shelter us. That is human nature showing its better side.”

On the ethics of journalism, asked what makes a good correspondent, Adie suggested that “you will only get good ethical journalistic behaviour if you yourself have a moral code.”

Despite covering global conflicts Adie joked that her most dangerous assignment was producing Songs of Praise: “There is nothing like someone who wants to be in the front pew.”

Biography

Kate Adie was born on 19 September 1945 , is an author and freelance broadcaster and was awarded the OBE in 1993.

Kate Adie has written The Kindness of Strangers, 2002; Corsets to camouflage: women and war, 2003; Nobody’s Child: the lives of abandoned children, 2005.

She is currently a presenter of BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent.

From 1989-2003 Adie was the Chief News Correspondent for BBC TV.

Kate Adie has won the RTS News Award twice, 1981 and 1997. She has also been awarded the BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award, 1989; Monte Carlo International TV Award, 1981 and 1991.

Other interests include: a trustee of the Imperial War Museum ; Honorary Professor of Broadcasting and Journalism, University of Sunderland ; Freeman, City of London ; Honorary Freeman, Borough of Sunderland.

The media contact is:

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