In Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School (UK), on the afternoon of Saturday 3rd October 2009 at the Graham Greene International Festival, the writer and journalist Kate Adie gave a highly professional and witty talk titled “Into Danger”, in which she spoke about her life and work as a reporter who, like Greene, ventured into difficult places often during a time of war.
Kate informed her attentive audience that journalists were assigned to their work on the same principle as a taxi driver finds his next fare. An event happens, and the first journalist in the queue is assigned to cover the story, whether it is the outbreak of war or the beginning of Crufts’ dog show.
She explained that being a journalist in a conflict zone was less dangerous than one might suppose. A journalist’s responsibility was to stay clear of trouble, and to return with her story on behalf of the public. She emphasised the outstanding courage which is demonstrated, for example, by the soldier whose task is to approach a bomb or mine and to defuse it.
She recalled that, as a journalist, she had looked at the lives of the foundlings of The Coram Foundation based in Berkhamsted on the site now occupied by Ashlyns School. These children were kept separate from the town, and in line with eighteenth century thinking they were taught to do simple work which was likely to be useful in service. She offers a brief history of foundlings in her book Nobody’s Child (2006).
Kate Adie is a former Chief News Correspondent to the BBC, and the author of Into Danger: Risking Your Life for Work (2008), Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War (Imperial War Museum, 2004) and The Kindness of Strangers: The Autobiography (2003). She was awarded the OBE in 1993, and won BAFTA’s Richard Dimbleby Award in 1990. She has honorary degrees from ten universities, is an Honorary Professor of Journalism at the University of Sunderland, and has three Honorary Fellowships.
Kate informed her attentive audience that journalists were assigned to their work on the same principle as a taxi driver finds his next fare. An event happens, and the first journalist in the queue is assigned to cover the story, whether it is the outbreak of war or the beginning of Crufts’ dog show.
She explained that being a journalist in a conflict zone was less dangerous than one might suppose. A journalist’s responsibility was to stay clear of trouble, and to return with her story on behalf of the public. She emphasised the outstanding courage which is demonstrated, for example, by the soldier whose task is to approach a bomb or mine and to defuse it.
She recalled that, as a journalist, she had looked at the lives of the foundlings of The Coram Foundation based in Berkhamsted on the site now occupied by Ashlyns School. These children were kept separate from the town, and in line with eighteenth century thinking they were taught to do simple work which was likely to be useful in service. She offers a brief history of foundlings in her book Nobody’s Child (2006).
Kate Adie is a former Chief News Correspondent to the BBC, and the author of Into Danger: Risking Your Life for Work (2008), Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War (Imperial War Museum, 2004) and The Kindness of Strangers: The Autobiography (2003). She was awarded the OBE in 1993, and won BAFTA’s Richard Dimbleby Award in 1990. She has honorary degrees from ten universities, is an Honorary Professor of Journalism at the University of Sunderland, and has three Honorary Fellowships.
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