The War Journalist Mother

I have worked for over twenty-five years as a correspondent, covering stories in Kosovo, Belgrade, Israel and all over the former USSR, including Chechnya. My motivation for this work is a driving passion. I’m so glad that I’m a journalist; I’m so relieved that my life took me in this direction. Because the best thing about it is that I can communicate what is happening to people. I can make those more fortunate understand other people’s lives.

The most dangerous time for me happened in Lithuania in January 1991. Oliver was only six and it was very hard to leave him. I remember saying on the phone to him ‘Olly, I have to stay, I have to tell people what’s going on here’.

We formed a very close kit group of correspondents while living in Moscow — which perhaps made us all feel a little bit more secure. Lithuania was at the forefront of the Baltic independence movement. We knew that at some point, Moscow wanted to crush it; this was still in the days of the Soviet Union.

One night (in 1993) I got a phone call from Trevor Peacock (of the Telegraph) who said something like, ‘Knickers on Sue; downstairs in five minutes’. I rushed downstairs and we jumped into the taxi, and headed for the Television Centre, not knowing what we were going to. There were tanks all over the place and they started chucking out this sort of white smoke. We literally couldn’t see a damn thing on the other side of it and I just remember thinking ‘anything could be on the other side of this smoke and smashing into some unseen vehicle and dying in a car crash getting to the story is a pretty ghastly way to go’. I can also remember thinking, ‘Oh God, this is probably not what I should be doing right now but this is where I am and I’m going to have to do it’.

When we arrived at the Television Tower there was chaos and gunshots all over the place. This lovely guy, Trevor Peacock said, ‘Have you been under fire before?’ I and another correspondent squeaked ‘No’. He gave us sound advice, ‘Well, you see the tank? If that gun moves round you just get down on the ground. There’s no point ever being a hero. You hear gunfire anywhere near you; you’re down on the ground, okay?’ That was the night I learned what a bullet whistling past your ear sounds like.

As I was walking up towards the Television Tower, I remember thinking, ‘I promised my mother I wouldn’t do this’! ( I later apologised to her). When I got back to the hotel I remember this intense desire to explain what had just taken place. In those days, we didn’t have phones that worked in the Soviet Union, so I used the hotel lobby phone and did a report on the spot. I think there were thirteen people killed that night; run over by tanks and so on.

I don’t get an adrenaline rush from seeing dead people. Far from it. But because of my own strong sense of family, I can really empathise and understand — unfortunately a bit too much sometimes — how trauma must affect people’s lives.

I know most mums would never dream of going to a dangerous area; would never dream of leaving their children – even for a holiday, but I’ve been a journalist for such a long time I don’t take unnecessary risks. For example, when I was in Moscow I didn’t go into Grozny. I decided that that was a step too far for me because journalists were being killed there. I didn’t go to Afghanistan either because I decided that for me, the chances of getting hurt, or killed, were higher than I was prepared to take.

You’re never a hundred per cent guaranteed of safety when working as a foreign correspondent but I will put my hand on my heart and say to Olly ‘I won’t do anything that I know to be really dangerous’. And I don’t. But I’m very aware that some of those journalists who aren’t parents do take more risks that I would - for instance going into Jenin in the Occupied Territories .

I don’t take these risks because yes, I am a mother, but also I’m a daughter. I’m very close to my parents. And because I’m a single mother, I rely on them to make sure Olly’s okay. They have only said ‘no’ in exceptional circumstances. Pakistan was one of them early in the Afghan conflict. But most of all I didn’t go because Oliver argued very fiercely against it. Funnily enough, I don’t actually think it would have been the most dangerous thing that I’ve done. But when all three of them are against it, it’s impossible to say ‘Well , ‘I’m going anyway’.

Of course I have felt guilty about the fact that when I’m working abroad, Olly is carrying on with his normal school life back at home, meaning I’ve missed school plays and things like that. There was also another time recently when he certainly could have done with me around and I felt really guilty not being there for him. But when I weighed it up at the time, I felt I was doing a better job as a correspondent in Jerusalem than I would have been as a mother in London. It’s impossible to juggle everything properly; you’re either being a good professional and a slightly worse mother, or there are times, occasionally, when you’re being a better mother and a bad professional.

I have joked with friends that I am a founder member of the Bad Mother’s Club; and Oliver and I joke about it too which hopefully shows that he doesn’t take it too seriously. I know that he understands because his whole life has been with me as a working mother/journalist which at times meant we lived abroad too.

I’ve been very lucky working with the organisations I’ve worked with, particularly GMTV. They’ve always understood, and the number of times my editors said, ‘Will this be okay for you to do with Olly?’ They’ve been really, really generous. I’ve been lucky.

I don’t think Olly has suffered particularly. He’s a very, very mature, perceptive individual. A lot of his understanding has come because we lived in Moscow for seven years. It helped him to view life in a different way and to appreciate differences. He’s not a traditionalist in any way. He would always take a sympathetic, humanitarian view — and I’m sure a lot of that has come of his weird upbringing!

Speaking candidly, I do think that motherhood has restricted my career. I don’t know a working mother who, if she’s being really honest, wouldn’t say that. Would (BBC Chief Correspondent) Kate Adie for example, have accomplished as much if she had been a mum?

I remember a radio discussion where there were three correspondents discussing the issue of motherhood after the kidnap of Yvonne Ridley (in Afghanistan in 2001). The theme was that it shouldn’t make any difference if you’re a mother or not — but interestingly none of them had children.

It does make a difference if you’re a mother — and you have to be a mother to know that it makes a difference. Yet I can honestly say that no-one has really criticised me for doing what I do because I think people are aware that I really do try to minimise the risks. For instance, while in Jerusalem recently I spent an awful lot of time in my hotel room when I wasn’t out filming because I didn’t want to take any kind of unnecessary risks.

The only thing I did was show the cameraman the market – unfortunately this was the time that a bomb went off. I wasn’t hurt, but I felt very bad about it and obviously called home immediately to say, ‘I’m all right’. Oliver was halfway up a Welsh mountain so I had to get the mobile phone number of the teacher who was with him and say, ‘ Look, before Oliver sits down and watches the news, please tell him I’m all right and not to worry’. Olly felt terribly upset because the bomb had been so close. And I felt terrible because he had such a bad night of worry. Saying ‘Don’t worry’ is a pretty meaningless phrase, really.

Telling my parents not to worry is a pretty useless thing too, especially when they saw me on television sporting a flak jacket. The first time I wore a flak jacket was in Bethlehem. It was a slightly worrying ride into Bethlehem — you calculate the danger by how worried your taxi driver is. I ended up rationalising, ‘Well, the Israelis have had their moments with journalists but they’re probably not going to open fire on a car that has TV on it because it would look so bad for them’. But I also thought, ‘I’m going to have to get on the phone to my mum after this and say, ‘Look, I’m wearing a bullet proof vest in Bethlehem because it is a sensible precaution; in fact we’re advised to do it. But I’m not trolling about the streets’.

Olly has often said ‘You will be careful, won’t you? I love you far too much to lose you’. And I say it back to him, you know, ‘I love you far too much to do anything at all that’s going to get me hurt’. He also knows I can’t promise I won’t get hurt, in the same way that he knows I can’t promise I’ll come back every day. I could be mown down by a car — you never know. I mean, none of us knows, we all live by a certain amount of faith.

When Olly goes to University, I’d like to go back abroad again. I would love a posting in the Middle East, for example. I wouldn’t regard it as being more dangerous; I’d just be there for longer periods. That would certainly make me very happy as a journalist.

I really do feel alive when I’m doing these stories. I enjoy meeting people — and perhaps it’s because I am a mother than I can relate to women in particularly and tell their stories with more compassion and empathy. There are plenty of times I’ve had tears at the back of my throat because of watching mothers and fathers mourning their dead children. And yes, there have been times when I go home and think about those faces. I’ll never forget in many of the things I’ve done.

I’m proud of my work when I feel I can make a difference. I sometimes go into schools and talk to children, or students about journalism, newspapers, media studies, that sort of thing and one of the things I always say is, ‘Don’t confuse journalism with what you sometimes see on tabloid newspapers; it’s journalism of a type but the journalism I’m talking about is when you can expose injustice’. It’s a huge motivation when I’m doing something that I consider important. Then, I’m really proud to call myself a journalist.