Women Reporting from the Frontline: an evening of discussion with award-winning foreign correspondents

Date: Thu 5 March 2009

Female foreign correspondents have become household names in recent years with reporters like Kate Adie and Orla Guerin now as familiar to us as John Simpson and Jeremy Bowen.

Whether in the West Bank or Iraq, women are now frequently reporting from the world’s most hostile and unstable regions, bringing insight and clarity to what has traditionally been a very male dominated area of the media.

This discussion will bring together a group of women who are changing the face of foreign affairs reporting in Britain. From tv news and documentary to print media, our panellists have a wealth of experience and will be discussing what its like to report from the front line in a war zone, and during the bleak aftermath of conflict. How hard is it to get assignments in areas of conflict in the first place?

Once in post, do women report situations differently from their male counterparts? How easy is it to file reports from countries where women don’t have the same freedom of movement and speech as men?

We’ll also be looking at the specific impacts of conflict on women as experienced first hand by our speakers. The evening will include excerpts from award winning reports and a Q&A Speakers include Marie Colvin (Sunday Times), Christine Toomey (Sunday Times), Ramita Navai (C4 Unreported World).