Kate Adie OBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions...
(born
Kathryn Adie 19 September 1945) is a British
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
. Her most high-profile role was that of chief news correspondent for
BBC NewsBBC News, formerly BBC News and Current Affairs, is the department within the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the corporation's news-gathering and production of news programmes on BBC television, radio and online....
during which time she became well-known for reporting from war zones around the world.
Adie was born in
NorthumberlandNorthumberland is a ceremonial county and unitary district in the North East of England. It borders Cumbria to the west, County Durham to the south and Tyne and Wear to the south east, as well as having a border with the Scottish Borders council area to the north, and nearly eighty miles of North...
, within sight of
St Mary's IslandSt. Mary's Island is a small island made of sandstone near the seaside resort of Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, UK.St. Mary's Island was originally called Bates Island, Hartley Bates or Bates Hill as it was originally owned by the Bates family who were prominent locally. It is sometimes known as Bait...
. She was adopted as a baby by a Sunderland couple and grew up in the city. She is an avid fan of the city's football team,
Sunderland A.F.C.Sunderland Association Football Club are a professional association football club based in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England, that compete in the Premier League. Since their formation in 1879, they have won six First Division titles—in 1892, 1893, 1895, 1902, 1913, and 1936 Sunderland Association...
.
Kate Adie OBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions...
(born
Kathryn Adie 19 September 1945) is a British
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
. Her most high-profile role was that of chief news correspondent for
BBC NewsBBC News, formerly BBC News and Current Affairs, is the department within the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the corporation's news-gathering and production of news programmes on BBC television, radio and online....
during which time she became well-known for reporting from war zones around the world.
Adie was born in
NorthumberlandNorthumberland is a ceremonial county and unitary district in the North East of England. It borders Cumbria to the west, County Durham to the south and Tyne and Wear to the south east, as well as having a border with the Scottish Borders council area to the north, and nearly eighty miles of North...
, within sight of
St Mary's IslandSt. Mary's Island is a small island made of sandstone near the seaside resort of Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, UK.St. Mary's Island was originally called Bates Island, Hartley Bates or Bates Hill as it was originally owned by the Bates family who were prominent locally. It is sometimes known as Bait...
. She was adopted as a baby by a Sunderland couple and grew up in the city. She is an avid fan of the city's football team,
Sunderland A.F.C.Sunderland Association Football Club are a professional association football club based in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England, that compete in the Premier League. Since their formation in 1879, they have won six First Division titles—in 1892, 1893, 1895, 1902, 1913, and 1936 Sunderland Association...
. She had an independent school education at Sunderland Church High School, and then studied at the
University of Newcastle upon TyneNewcastle University is a major research-intensive university located in Newcastle upon Tyne in the north-east of England. It was established as a School of Medicine and Surgery in 1834 and became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne by an Act of Parliament in August 1963...
where she took a degree in
Scandinavian StudiesScandinavia is a geographical region in northern Europe that includes, and is named after, the Scanian Province. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark...
and starred in several
Gilbert and SullivanGilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian era partnership of librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
productions. Her career with the BBC began as a station assistant at
BBC Radio Durham-Background:BBC Radio Durham was part of the BBC's original plan to have 9 sites where local radio experiments would be carried out. It is the only one of the original stations to have fully closed down....
, then a producer for Radio Bristol. She then switched to television, directing outside broadcasts. She was a reporter for regional TV News in
PlymouthPlymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
and
SouthamptonSouthampton is the largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire, on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
. She joined the national news team in 1976.
Her big break was the London
Iranian Embassy siegeThe Iranian Embassy Siege of 1980 was a siege of the Iranian embassy in London after it had been taken over by Iranian Arab separatists. The siege was ended when British special forces, the Special Air Service , stormed the building in Operation Nimrod...
in 1980. As that evening's duty reporter, Adie was first on the scene as the
Special Air ServiceThe Special Air Service is a special forces regiment within the British Army which has served as a model for the special forces of other countries. The SAS forms a significant section of United Kingdom Special Forces alongside the Special Boat Service , Special Reconnaissance Regiment , and the...
stormed the embassy. The BBC interrupted coverage of the World Snooker Championships and Adie reported live and unscripted to one of the largest news audiences ever whilst crouched behind a car door.
Adie was regularly dispatched to report on disasters and conflicts throughout the 1980s, including the American bombing of
TripoliTripoli is the largest and capital city of Libya.Tripoli has a population of 1.69 million...
in 1986, which proved highly controversial with the
Conservative PartyThe Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, the Conservative Party, or Tory Party is a conservative political party in the United Kingdom...
Chairman
Norman TebbitNorman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit CH, PC is a British Conservative politician and former Member of Parliament for Chingford, who was born in Southgate in Enfield...
, and the Lockerbie bombing of 1988. She was promoted to Chief News Correspondent in 1989 and held the role for fourteen years. One of her first assignments was to report the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, referred to in most of the Western world as the Tiananmen Square massacre and in the People's Republic of China as the June Fourth Incident , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the PRC beginning on 14 April...
where she sustained a slight gunshot wound to the elbow. Major assignments followed in the
Gulf WarThe Persian Gulf War , known also as the Gulf War, the First Gulf War,or often as the Second Gulf War and by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as The Mother of all Battles, or commonly as Desert Storm, for the military response...
, war in the former
Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaThe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the second half of World War II until it was formally dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro,...
, the 1994
Rwandan GenocideThe Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April through mid-July, at least 500,000...
and the war in
Sierra LeoneSierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea in the north, Liberia in the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean in the southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has a population estimated at 6.4 million...
in 2000. In 2003 Adie withdrew from front-line reporting. She currently works as a freelance journalist and
public speakerA public speaker is a person who makes speeches in public settings. A speaker may address a large assembly of people or small gatherings. For large assemblies, the speaker will usually speak with the aid of a public address system or microphone and loudspeaker.The objectives of a public speaker's...
, including regular reports on
Radio New ZealandRadio New Zealand Limited is New Zealand's public service radio broadcaster.-History:Radio New Zealand was established in 1975. Until that year, radio services were provided by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation , and, before 1962, the New Zealand Broadcasting Service...
. Kate Adie presents
From Our Own CorrespondentFrom Our Own Correspondent is a BBC radio programme in which BBC correspondents broadcast monologues on topical current events from countries outside the UK...
on
BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4 is a domestic UK radio station that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967.-Outline:...
. She hosted two five-part series of
Found, a Leopard Films production for BBC1, in 2005 and 2006. The series considered the life experiences of adults affected by
adoptionAdoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another who is not kin and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...
and what it must be like to start one's life as a
foundlingFoundling may refer to:* An abandoned child; see Child abandonment.* The Foundling and Other Tales from Prydain, a prequel to Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain...
.
Her close-to-the-action approach once caused her to be shot at by an "irate
LibyaLibya , officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , is a country located in North Africa...
n". The shot nicked her collar bone but she did not suffer permanent harm. Indeed, it was this approach that elicited the wry adage that "a good decision is getting on a plane at an airport where Kate Adie is getting off".
While she was in Yugoslavia, her leg was injured in Bosnia, and she also met
Radovan KaradžićRadovan Karadžić is a former Bosnian Serb politician, poet and psychiatrist. He is currently on trial in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen accused of war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats, and other non-Serbs during the Siege of Sarajevo...
while there.
Adie published a best-selling autobiography in 2002. A second book,
Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War, was published in 2003. In 2005, Adie published her third book
Nobody's Child. This covers the history of foundling children and questions of identity. A fourth book,
Into Danger: People Who Risk Their Lives for Work was published in September 2008.
Adie was awarded an OBE in 1993 and won the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1990. She has
honorary degreeAn honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements...
s from 10 universities, is an Honorary Professor of Journalism at the
University of SunderlandThe University of Sunderland is located in Sunderland, North East England. The University has more than 10,000 students, including 7,000-plus international students from some 70 countries....
, and has 3 Honorary Fellowships.
External links