Kate Adie: A Modern Trailblazer of Women in Broadcasting

Kate Adie was one of the few trailblazing women who were pushing their way into the spotlight through the dense mass of the male-dominated workforce. She began her career during the late 1960s where women were an extreme minority in the fields of broadcasting. During an interview, she stated “When I came into the world of work [late 1960s], women weren’t expected to do a lot of jobs. There were still no high court judges who were women. There were no senior policewomen. There were no women in the armed services. There were a huge number of jobs in which women did not figure at all. I came into a world of work where you were expected to find barriers against you”. She worked her way through the inequality to make herself stand out and become the important broadcaster we know her as today. She got to experience during the 1970s the legal rights to equal pay and opportunities that were being brought in by law.

 She started by obtaining a position as a station assistant at BBC Radio Durham, and then became a producer for Radio Bristol. She then transferred to television news where few women were working as reporters. She was reporting for regional TV News in Plymouth and Southampton and would join the national news team in 1976. There she experienced resistance due to her gender where people were reluctant to accept a woman doing this job and even assigning females to the less serious topics. When asked about this she stated “When it came to it, all working women knew there would be pressure anyway. You took it for granted that there would be hostile remarks; that people would be difficult. Frequently, when you turned up with a TV crew, somebody would ask: “Well, dear, where’s the reporter?” That was patronizing. The assumption was that you were a personal assistant”. Most people believed that reporting overall, especially more important topics including economics and crime, should be left to the males yet there were some exceptions. Kate Adie was fortunate to have the seniors of her news organization to be liberal-minded so that they allowed her to report on more essential topics. While Adie had this advantage most women during this time did not and they were stuck with either no work at all or left with the fluff topics. 

 Kate managed to be at the right place at the right time when it came to one of her most important covers of London’s Iranian Embassy raid. She stated that she was asked to cover for a senior reporter during the sixth day of the siege and moments after she arrived the SAS raided the embassy. This was considered to be her big break and following this, she was soon dispatched to conflicts all around the globe. She reported on many memorable events such as both Gulf Wars, four years of war in the Balkans, and the final NATO intervention in Kosovo and elections in 2000. She also reported the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster at Zeebrugge, the massacre at Dunblane, the Selby rail crash, the Bologna railway station bombing, and the Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing in 1989. These monumental and historical events that Adie reported on showed that women were capable of reporting the essential news and not just the fluff news. The list of crucial assignments she completed continues with the Lockerbie bombing, multiple reports in Northern Ireland throughout The Troubles, reported on the referendum to ratify the Good Friday Agreement, the bombing of Tripoli by the US in 1986, the Rwandan Genocide, and the British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War. Shown by the immense amount of assignments Kate Adie has reported on truly shows how not only versatile she was but how she proves how capable she was. She completed important tasks by informing the public about these significant topics but the fact that she was a woman being entrusted with these events was almost as monumental as some of the events she was reporting on. This was a great stride towards the search for equality in fields such as broadcasting where people felt as though only a man could do that job. Kate Adie not only proves that she was meant to be a groundbreaking reporter but that it was possible for all other women too.

 Kate Adie was also a successful author who wrote multiple novels including her first book that examined her life as a reporter, The Kindness of Strangers, which won the Sunday Times bestseller list for 37 weeks. Others include Corsets to Camouflage, Nobody’s Child, Into Danger, and Fighting the Home Front: The Legacy of Women in World War One. On top of all the books and assignments she completed, she also served as a judge for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Bailey’s, the Whitbread, the Costa Prize, and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. She also served as a trustee of the Imperial War Museum and the Sunderland Football Foundation. Her importance to the broadcasting world did not go unrecognized shown by her countless awards and honors. Adie has honorary degrees from universities such as Newcastle, Bath, Nottingham, Cardiff, and St Andrews. Kate Adie is also an honorary professor of journalism at Sunderland University and was honored with a Bafta Fellowship in 2018. Other awards she received included the Royal television Society Reporter of the Year 1980, won the 1981 and 1990 Monte Carlo International Golden Nymph Award, and the Richard Dimbleby BAFTA Award in 1990. Her extensive lists of awards exhibit not only her ability to achieve this great but the chance for all women to reach for their dreams.

 Adie needed to show immeasurable power to prove to the world that she capable of being one of the most significant reporters even today’s patriarchal dominated society. She resigned from BBC in 2003 after being sidelined ahead of the expected conflict with Iraq. This apparently mutual decision to step down ended her 34-year career though she continued to work as a freelance presenter for BBC. Kate Adie was marginalized at the BBC while working there possibly due to her outspoken criticisms of the corporation. She believes she was been overlooked due to her bosses being “obsessed with “cute faces and cute bottoms and nothing else in between”. This theory can be accredited by her receiving only a peripheral role during the war in Afghanistan which appears to have motivated her resignation. Though Kate Adie and many other influential women worked to destroy the sexist notions that women cannot excel in these male-dominated workforces there is still much more work to achieve.   

https://informationcradle.com/kate-adie/

http://www.kateadie.co.uk/biography.htm

Yellow Journalism: Still Found Today in our Society

The fact that not only are we still being deceived by the same concepts that were created in the 19^th-century but the fact that they are advancing to such extreme levels where it is unavoidable yet rarely noticeable. Yellow journalism is when journalism and newspapers present exaggerated and possibly unprofessional news that lacks in research due to its reliance on eye-catching topics. This concept has adapted itself throughout the years to be almost indistinguishable from actual real news which is an alarming thought. The use of flashy usually misleading headlines is unfortunately extremely common in today’s society. Our shorter attention spans are used to the media's

advantage by creating interesting topics that can distract us from the truth that is right in front of us. If someone were to go online to search for news articles it would be extremely easy to mistake an add or fake news as a reliable news source. Advertisements have been a constant part of everyone’s life, yet people try to avoid these adds so companies work to blend their advertisements into the real news.

The competition that is created by the countless news sources available to us today makes each company have to keep up with the constant usually exaggerated news topics that are produced every day. This puts great pressure on new sources to create interesting updates and when there is little to report they feel as though they are forced to produce fake news or try to make minuscule topics into something much bigger. This can lead to people obtaining inaccurate information and spreading it as facts to other people. This is unacceptable in my eyes because the greed of some people needing good ratings makes countless people suffer the consequences of believing in awfully embellished ideas. This is harmful to society because it leads people to blindly follow any information, they find which can lead to overall ignorance and an ignorant world could create a dense community.

  It is as though we have expanded on the concept of the penny press which was tabloid-style mass-produced newspapers. The only change that we have had throughout these years is that we have moved to online platforms which would actually worsen the effects of its crudeness. Due to the news today being so saturated by the constant use of gore and gossip the idea of mass-produced constant updates that are somehow always intriguing. Now with our instant access to all types of news and information, this concept would only be worse due to the fast-pace lives of everyone. People expect things instantly and constantly, so the news sources feel as though they need to keep up with our desire for updated and interesting topics every day even if there is no new news. When there is a lack of intense and eye-catching news the sources will stretch any information into something that we would want to read. News sources have become more of a story-telling device than simply reporting important news that people should be aware of. Instead, people are continuously overreacting to non-existent problems because the news is more concerned with their ratings than keeping the public updated. The news is supposed to be a way to stay connected to the rest of the world but now it seems it is more of a way to hear intriguing and heart-throbbing stories.

The embellishments and over-saturation of news that cause an overreaction in the public because they believe that the situation is as bad as the news state it is. This can be seen today by turning on a news station at any time and there is more of a possibility that there will be discussions about the Coronavirus compared to anything else. Even before it became an actual issue the media was oversaturated with constant updates and worrisome statements about this virus.

To end this fake news, we would need muckrakers in today's society to expose these injustices. The muckrakers were journalists who showed the corruption found in the usually wealthy leader and corporate monopolies.  We need people who work to expose the companies who are only looking out for their own profit so we can be aware of who is credible or not. Investigative journalism needs to be more common in today’s society, so we can have access to unbiased news sources and avoid fake news. To finally end the reign of yellow journalism and penny press a great deal of work is required from journalists to create unbiased and true news and to help society differentiate between the real and the fake.            

Civil War and the Press: Variations in Journalism

*Overall differences and history to give an overview of the Civil War before diving into the specific topic of journalism 

An individual’s personal views can always be seen affecting how they interpret an event, and due to this bias, there tend to be multiple understandings of the same historical situation. When dealing with people who are writing about something that is extremely controversial there is a great chance for small differences in their wording and overall details of that event. Due to this, there are countless interpretations of famous and controversial events such as the Civil War. Many individuals with varying beliefs have written about this monumental war which would cause there to be an overflood of divergent information. Historians have obtained a focus on examining the differences in journalism during the Civil War between various points of view. People today are analyzing how the journalist during that time was affected by their own personal views and how that was transferred into their writing.

 Many historians such as Ford Risley have examined the role of the press during the Civil War and how your location and your personal beliefs can alter how you decide to write and interpret. Risley worked to show the disparity between a journalist in the North compared to the South shown by how press found in the Northern states greatly supported and exaggerated their own side while of course, the Southern press would do the same for their side. The Northern publications “supported the administration’s policies on virtually every issue. They beat the drum for war, exaggerating Union victories and minimizing Union defeats”. While the Southern side “praised the heroic efforts of soldiers and civilians, decried apathy and disloyalty, emphasized Union problems, and explained the consequences of defeat”.

There were Northern Democratic newspapers that were found that supported the views of the Confederacy though there were very few Southern editors that opposed the views of the Confederacy. The Northern states had “Copperhead publications, as they were known, virulently opposed the war. They believed the southern states had a right to leave the Union. They also viewed slavery as a state issue and argued that only individual states had a right to eliminate it”. While in the Southern states “few editors dared not to support the Confederacy in its fight with the Union. Most had been outspoken supporters of slavery and they advocated any means of preserving the institution they believed was so vital to maintaining the South’s economy and way of life”. There were still few in the Southern states that criticized the Confederacy’s leaders, but it seemed that there was more Northern support of the Confederacy than there was the opposition of the Confederacy in Southern areas.

During this war, an immense amount of newspapers was published though many of these publications tended to include extreme exaggerations to compete with other competitors. These implications hurt both sides so censorship measures were taken by both to prevent false or sensitive data from reaching the public. This war allowed for the advancements of both side's publications to expand to better cover complex situations such as the Civil War. The two sides were similar in the fact that they both had the want for more news and publications though “reporting for Northern newspapers was a logistical struggle, it was a nightmare for the South. Telegraph and rail connections were sparse and unreliable. Furthermore, Southern newspapers were cut off from the Associated Press, the leading news-sharing cooperative, based in New York”. The Southern states had a disadvantage when it came to publishing their beliefs and findings due to the restrictions caused by the Northern areas.

 It tended to be evident on which side a newspaper supported which can be shown by “The Chester County Times in Pennsylvania made no attempt to disguise how it felt about the election of Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s 16th president. “A Clean Sweep!” it exclaimed. “Corruption Ended!! The Country Redeemed! Secession is Rebuked!!! Let the Traitors Rave!.” This is obviously a Northern state showing its opposition to the Confederacy through the war which was the standard point of view found in Northern journalism. There were also cases of opposition to the war found in both sides but mostly the North which can be seen by “Republicans fashioned the earliest dominant interpretation of Democratic opposition during the war itself. They charged Peace Democrats with treason and disloyalty, labeled them “Copperheads” for their scheming venomous attacks, and considered them a “fire in the rear” materially undermining the war effort”. These Peace Democrats favored ending the war through an immediate peace agreement with the Confederate states.

 Though there were some who opposed most tended to support the war whether it was through their own beliefs or through fear. “Union soldiers forcibly arrested Clement L. Vallandigham, a prominent Democratic politician, and former congressman, for an anti-war speech which he had given a few days earlier in Mount Vernon, Ohio”. After his conviction, President Lincoln changed his sentence from imprisonment to banishment to the Confederacy which showed how seriously the government was taking any opposition to the war. Most people would end up supporting the war either due to their own beliefs or the fear instilled through the government yet some men, especially in the Northern states, would have the strength to oppose and become a Peace Democrat.

While there seemed to be more opposition to the war found in the Northern states there was still some resistance in the Southern states shown by “Wartime hardships intensified the internal divisions of the mountain South. Many southern grew to resent the intrusion of the Confederate government with its increased demand for volunteers and seizure of military supplies”. There were people who were near the southern Appalachians that were divided in their loyalty to the Confederacy which they developed a resistance to the rebel government. So, while there were cases of Southern areas opposing the war it was also common to find strong supporters of the Confederacy and the need for war. “Elements of opposition to the war” in the North but claimed, without amplification, they were “not as widespread as in the South”. This internal division found in the Southern states could be accredited to one of the reasons why they lost this war. “A cursory glance at the Confederacy reveals numerous instances of bitter strife, and one who delves deeply into the literature of the period may easily conclude that Southerners hated each other more than they did the Yankees”. This fact would help bring evidence towards how divided the South was and how this could help lead to the fall of the Confederacy. The main differences in how the two sides journalism was different were that they both tended to support and empathize with their own side more, yet both sides had pro-war and anti-war voices with variance on their strength.   

https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/civil-war-journalism.html

https://americanantiquarian.org/earlyamericannewsmedia/exhibits/show/news-and-the-civil-war/civil-war-reporting-and-report

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-newspapers-reported-the-civil-war-17280757/

https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/wmbrts7&div=8&id=&page=

https://books.google.com/books?id=GVGoDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PR7&ots=G82DVmZgvg&dq=opposing%20the%20war%20during%20the%20civil%20war&lr&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=opposing%20the%20war%20during%20the%20civil%20war&f=false       

https://books.google.com/books?id=QHNEtpvEB30C&lpg=PA15&ots=fVWl19vXJV&dq=support%20the%20confederacy%20southern%20civil%20war&lr&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q=support%20the%20confederacy%20southern%20civil%20war&f=false