Latest news with #FromOurOwnCorrespondent
BBC News
13-04-2025
- General
- BBC News
Kate Adie collection curated at Sunderland University
An archive featuring notebooks and pictures belonging to journalist and author Katie Adie has been curated in her former BBC reporter, described as a "trailblazer" in the world of journalism, grew up in Sunderland and covered a raft of major events, including the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege and the 1989 student uprising in Tiananmen bomb fragments and a chunk of the Berlin Wall are part of the special collection at the University of Sunderland, which will be taken out into the who donated more than 2,000 items to preserve a record of her professional career, said it was a "privilege to be a reporter because you poke your nose in". Adie began her career working in local radio at BBC Radio Durham and then BBC Radio Bristol, before moving into she became chief news correspondent for the BBC in 1989, holding the post for 14 years and reported from conflicts including both Gulf Wars and war in the currently presents From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4. 'First-rate hoarder' Adie said growing up in Sunderland had felt "magical" and she remembered an "immensely happy" childhood."The town itself was friendly," she said. "You can never stand in the bus queue without saying, 'Well, pet, what do you think?' It was just great." She said by donating the items she wanted people to "feel proud" of their about the items, Adie said: "Well first of all, it sounds as if I'm a first-rate hoarder."A reporter does not usually have much time to collect souvenirs so it's an eclectic collection, but I hope it represents the extraordinarily varied stories I've covered, from wars to royal garden parties." Adie donated the items in 2005 and grant funding was awarded last year to catalogue them as part of the university's "Special Collections", which can be viewed by appointment David Bell, university vice chancellor and chief executive, said: "Kate Adie is one of the most talented journalists and broadcasters of her generation and, as a native of Sunderland, her collection will be of interest both locally and further afield."The Kate Adie Collection was officially launched on Thursday. Follow BBC Sunderland on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
BBC had unofficial league table of best and worst British accents, says top correspondent
The BBC had an 'unofficial league table' of British accents, in which Birmingham was ranked the worst, one of the broadcaster's most esteemed war correspondents has said. In remarks at a University of Sunderland event marking the opening of an archive of her work, Kate Adie – who now presents From Our Own Correspondent – said the BBC would receive widespread complaints over regional accents when she started her career. Ms Adie, who for years was one of the BBC's best-known journalists, said: 'It is one of this country's complex matters. Accents vary hugely and how they are received varies hugely. 'Years and years ago the BBC had an unofficial league table of the most liked and the most hated accents. 'The view was that some of them drove people nuts up and down the country. Geordie did pretty well. It's liked.' Confirming the answer given by the audience when asked to guess what the most disliked accent was, Ms Adie is reported by The Guardian to have said: 'From one end of the country to another, it's Birmingham. 'Michael Buerk, who comes from Birmingham, was once asked why he didn't use the accent. He said, 'I didn't want death threats'.' The veteran correspondent said that, when she started out as a station assistant at BBC Radio Durham, they would receive 'complaints from everywhere' if a locally-accented producer read the news bulletin. 'We got complaints from everywhere. The whole range of audience. They felt it wasn't right for news. It is a curious one,' she said. Ms Adie, aged 79, covered a host of conflicts while working as the BBC's chief news reporter between 1989 and 2003, having first joined the corporation as a radio technician and producer 20 years prior. Her first major break came covering the Iranian embassy siege in 1980, after which she went on to report from war zones around the world, including the Gulf War, the 1986 bombing of Libya, and the Bosnian war. During the Tiananmen Square massacre, Ms Adie was hit in the elbow by a bullet which is reported to have killed the man standing next to her, and was nicked by a bullet fired at point-blank range in Libya. She was awarded an OBE in 1993. The newly opened archive is reported to contain more than 2,300 items donated to the university, including Ms Adie's tapes, letters, photographs and the bullet which grazed her at Tiananmen Square. The Independent has approached the BBC for comment.
The Independent
12-04-2025
- General
- The Independent
BBC had unofficial league table of best and worst British accents, says top correspondent
The BBC had an 'unofficial league table' of British accents, in which Birmingham was ranked the worst, one of the broadcaster's most esteemed war correspondents has said. In remarks at a University of Sunderland event marking the opening of an archive of her work, Kate Adie – who now presents From Our Own Correspondent – said the BBC would receive widespread complaints over regional accents when she started her career. Ms Adie, who for years was one of the BBC's best-known journalists, said: 'It is one of this country's complex matters. Accents vary hugely and how they are received varies hugely. 'Years and years ago the BBC had an unofficial league table of the most liked and the most hated accents. 'The view was that some of them drove people nuts up and down the country. Geordie did pretty well. It's liked.' Confirming the answer given by the audience when asked to guess what the most disliked accent was, Ms Adie is reported by The Guardian to have said: 'From one end of the country to another, it's Birmingham. ' Michael Buerk, who comes from Birmingham, was once asked why he didn't use the accent. He said, 'I didn't want death threats'.' The veteran correspondent said that, when she started out as a station assistant at BBC Radio Durham, they would receive 'complaints from everywhere' if a locally-accented producer read the news bulletin. 'We got complaints from everywhere. The whole range of audience. They felt it wasn't right for news. It is a curious one,' she said. Ms Adie, aged 79, covered a host of conflicts while working as the BBC's chief news reporter between 1989 and 2003, having first joined the corporation as a radio technician and producer 20 years prior. Her first major break came covering the Iranian embassy siege in 1980, after which she went on to report from war zones around the world, including the Gulf War, the 1986 bombing of Libya, and the Bosnian war. During the Tiananmen Square massacre, Ms Adie was hit in the elbow by a bullet which is reported to have killed the man standing next to her, and was nicked by a bullet fired at point-blank range in Libya. She was awarded an OBE in 1993. The newly opened archive is reported to contain more than 2,300 items donated to the university, including Ms Adie's tapes, letters, photographs and the bullet which grazed her at Tiananmen Square.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Stephen Jessel obituary
'Incandescent with rage', was a recurring self-description by Stephen Jessel, the former BBC foreign correspondent, as he encountered the uncooperative in the far corners of the earth and back at Broadcasting House. This was, however, the cover not the book. Stephen tempered his worldview with a warm heart, a self-deprecating sense of humour and a sly way of turning a critical piece on its head. Just as it seemed the new EuroDisney experience in Marne-la-Vallée near Paris, in 1992, was in for a nightmare review – 'humour without wit', he snarled, 'light without shadow, the present without a past, sound without echo', the soi-disant Mr Grumpy hinted in closing that he might be tempted to admit he had rather enjoyed it. Stephen, who has died aged 81, was one of the finest exponents of From Our Own Correspondent, that weekly showcase of five-minute overseas essays on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, in which the correspondent has a chance to breathe, freed from the shackles of attempted impartiality, live broadcasting and 'Who, what, where, when, why?' FOOC best traces his story, from Paris to Beijing to Brussels and back to Paris in the last quarter of the 20th century. He was a master of appearing to tell the listener one thing, but registering another. Thus, in a dispatch about the French 'Yes' to the Maastricht treaty in September 1992, Stephen recalled how exactly 200 years earlier the revolutionary French had defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Valmy, possibly, he said, because of a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Prussian commander – 'It was never quite clear why, at his death, precious stones from the French Crown were found among his effects. Maybe it was an early form of European Monetary Union.' Stephen added: 'That same day … France abolished the monarchy. The monarch himself was abolished later.' In 1995, the BBC removed Stephen from Paris and from the staff, as was the untimely form then. Gillian Reynolds, doyenne of radio critics, writing in the Daily Telegraph, castigated the BBC for getting rid of him 'for being a bit old (ie 50) and too good at his job'. Born in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, Stephen was the son of Robert Jessel, defence correspondent of the Times, and Penelope (nee Blackwell), of the renowned Oxford publisher-bookshop family, a lecturer in social administration at Plater College, Oxford, and active in national Liberal party politics. Stephen attended the Dragon school in Oxford, then Shrewsbury school, and Balliol College, Oxford (1961-65), where he studied classics. He then went to the Times, where he was a general news reporter then education correspondent. It was there that he met Jane Marshall; they married in 1970. He moved to the BBC in Broadcasting House in 1972 as a radio reporter and presenter of Newsdesk and The World Tonight, and was education correspondent during Margaret Thatcher's 1970-74 spell as education minister. Stephen's first foreign posting was to Paris, in 1977, which he made his home from then on, apart from his professional excursions to Beijing (1981-84), to Brussels for three years and then, after a brief spell in Washington, where he pined for Europe, back to Paris in 1997. His professional years were by no means exclusively observations from a metropolitan height. On the Turkey-Iran border among the dispossessed Kurds, in 1991, he was moved by the youthful inspiration and dedication of the French aid workers of Médecins Sans Frontières, spiritually grounded as he saw it in les événements, the youthful political uprising of more than 20 years earlier. In austere but emergent China in 1982 he saw the now prime minister Thatcher stiff-armed by Deng Xiaoping over the expiring Hong Kong lease (it is said that she fell down the steps of the Great Hall of the People immediately after recognising Stephen among the press). In early 1979, after months of door-stepping Ruholla Khomeini of Iran in the Paris suburb of Neauphle-le-Château, he was a passenger on the Air France flight that returned Khomeini to Tehran and the unfolding Iranian revolution. He covered the Olof Palme assassination in 1986, a dramatic break from the Euro-machinations back at base in Brussels. He was in Zaire for the last days of Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, waking up one morning in a car full of hand grenades. In 1981, the China of the post-Mao era was a testing post for Stephen, Jane and their new daughter, Miranda: a world of watchers, spies, servants, residential compounds, little good food and even scarcer burgundy, yet a national, cultural and economic upheaval he relished reporting. After he left, in 1985, swearing never to return, he broke his promise many times, increasingly impressed at each visit: in 2006 he wrote, 'Kunming, capital of Yunnan, had been a sleepy provincial town of wooden shop houses – lights out at 21:00 – now it had become Hong Kong: designer boutiques, neon, teenagers on their mobile phones.' (Characteristically, he left the listener guessing which one he preferred.) Though Paris was his home, a well-lubricated lunch his arena, perhaps after a Tuileries stroll with his hound, and his love and knowledge of the French language profound, Stephen was no besotted Francophile. He viewed France and the French with affectionate suspicion. Describing a battle within the French linguistic establishment, after the Superior Council of the French Language recommended the abolition of the circumflex accent, Stephen wrote: 'It was as if the Athenaeum were being ravaged by a pillow fight.' Stephen loved travel, and he and Jane kept it up, especially to east Asia, until a traffic accident in Turkey in 2013, after which his health deteriorated. He is survived by Jane and Miranda, by his two grandchildren, Eleanor and Franklin, and by his brother David. Stephen Jessel, journalist, born 9 August 1943; died 7 March 2025
Reuters
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
米国防長官、対ロシア交渉戦略を擁護 ウクライナ紛争巡り
[ブリュッセル １３日 ロイター] - ヘグセス米国防長官は１３日、ウクライナ戦争を巡る米国の対ロシア交渉戦略に対する批判を一蹴した。また、欧州はその防衛責任を米国に担わせるべきではないと警告した。 ブリュッセルの北大西洋条約機構（ＮＡＴＯ）本部で記者会見し、「トランプ大統領は米国を『カモ』にするようなことは誰にも許さない」と強調し、欧州大陸の防衛は欧州が第一に責任を負うべきだと述べた。 ヘグセス氏は１２日、ウクライナが２０１４年以前の国境に戻るのは非現実的で、米政権はウクライナのＮＡＴＯ加盟がロシアによる戦争の解決策の一部になるとは考えていないとの見解を示した。 もっと見る 欧州ではこれに対し、和平交渉が始まる前にロシアに譲歩したなどとの批判が相次いだ。 ヘグセス氏は１３日、自身の発言について、戦場の現実を認識したものだとして擁護した。 Andrew Gray トムソン・ロイター Andrew Gray is Reuters' European Affairs Editor. Based in Brussels, he covers NATO and the European Union and leads a pan-European team of reporters focused on diplomacy, defence and security. A journalist for almost 30 years, he has previously been based in the UK, Germany, Geneva, the Balkans, West Africa and Washington, where he reported on the Pentagon. He covered the Iraq war in 2003 and contributed a chapter to a Reuters book on the conflict. He has also worked at Politico Europe as a senior editor and podcast host, served as the main editor for a fellowship programme for journalists from the Balkans, and contributed to the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent radio show. Phil Stewart トムソン・ロイター Phil Stewart has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award. Idrees Ali トムソン・ロイター National security correspondent focusing on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Reports on U.S. military activity and operations throughout the world and the impact that they have. Has reported from over two dozen countries to include Iraq, Afghanistan, and much of the Middle East, Asia and Europe. From Karachi, Pakistan.
