And Thank You For Watching

by Mark Austin

  The most I’ve ever been asked to do is straighten my tie or get my hair cut. Having said that, I did get a trashing for my appearance in The Sun once. In his column ‘Telly Talk’, Charlie Catchpole wrote: ‘Moira Stuart and Mark Austin looked like beauty and the beast on the BBC news at the weekend. Beside immaculate Moira, Mark seemed to have been dragged through several hedges backwards. His hair must have been blow dried in a wind tunnel at British Aerospace and, if he’d shaved, I can only presume he’s used a potato-peeler by mistake. Well below the mark, Mark!’

  Well below the belt, Charlie! I knew Catchpole and I took it on the chin. It was amusing and I did look a bit scruffy on the telly in those days. But the criticism of a woman’s appearance is altogether more pernicious. The criticism of me was comical, but because women on TV are often defined by their appearance and it is seen as an essential part of their job, the criticism they face is insidious.

  And it has only become worse with the introduction of social media. Fiona Bruce, the BBC newsreader, has spoken about the ‘hideously misogynistic’ online abuse that high-profile women on TV receive: ‘I’m astonished at the freedom with which a depressingly large number of men feel they can say what they want… about women. I look at my daughter and think, “God I didn’t think this was coming your way”. I really didn’t.’

  Fiona concedes that things are changing slowly and suggests its thanks to ‘talented reporters’, including BBC chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet: ‘Because when you listen to Lyse, you don’t think, “What is she wearing?” Most of the time it’s a flak jacket! What you think is, “God, she’s in the middle of Aleppo risking her life.”’

  And she’s right. There are a number of women reporters who are able to go quietly about their business and who are being judged on little else than their work. When you watch Lyse, or Channel 4’s Lindsey Hilsum, or CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, or Orla Guerin of the BBC, or ITN’s Penny Marshall, or Alex Crawford of Sky News, you are seeing a woman at the very top of the game. They are role models who inspire young women and young journalists generally, and who are helping to change things.

  But CNN’s Amanpour says it was never easy to establish herself in a man’s world: ‘I did think I had to behave like a guy, there’s no doubt about it. I did think that I couldn’t be touchy-feely in a macho world. And it stays with you. It’s not good.’

  Amanpour and I both found ourselves in our first war zone at the same time. We were in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War in 1990. She believes being a woman was actually an advantage in that situation: ‘It was not only me; I had a camerawoman and a female sound recordist. We were given the job because we were women… CNN said, “We are sending these women to the most patriarchal society in the world, Saudi Arabia.” What it did was give me a profile,’ she told me, ‘and because I was a woman I got a lot of preferential treatment from a lot of the men there, particularly some of the Saudi princes.

  ‘I remember when we got to Saudi Arabia. The brother of the current crown prince was a bigshot then, and he drove me and my crew all the way to the Saudi–Kuwaiti border and we got the first shots of Iraqi tanks in the “no man’s land” and we scooped everybody… and all the men from the American networks had smoke coming out of their ears.

  ‘I would say, throughout my career, being a woman was a massive help because I was at the cutting edge of women being put in these jobs.’

  But she says, being a correspondent, she was treated differently to female presenters: ‘There is no doubt. I have also experienced male bosses dictating to female anchors what style their hair should be, what streaks and strands and colours should be in their hair, how high the hemline should be… the glass desk so you see the legs. Women did it. They hated it, but did it reluctantly.

  ‘It still exists. It’s a beauty contest. I never dyed my hair, I never did my teeth, I never did anything like that, but I was not in the studio under the lights day in, day out.’

  Yes, things are definitely improving. Women presenters are being given more opportunity and greater roles in television news, and not before time. But the problem is that it is still mainly men appointing them or promoting them.

  So it is changing slowly, but the real progress will come when it is women making more of the decisions in television newsrooms and above. Deborah Turness was a brilliant and inspirational editor of ITV News who went on to become president of NBC News, and Fran Unsworth has recently been made the head of news and current affairs at the BBC. There should be more and will be, in time.

  Amanpour agrees: ‘It’s changing slowly, but until there are more female presidents of companies, until there are females who actually do the hiring and firing and create the ethos of the company, it is going to be a very hard slog.’

  The recent revelations about Harvey Weinstein and the sackings of powerful male TV presenters such as Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose in the United States will undoubtedly hasten the pace of change in Hollywood and on television.

  Cristiane Amanpour sees a direct connection between everyday sexism in the workplace and the allegations of sexual misconduct that led to the #MeToo movement: ‘One thing leads to another in such a permissive environment. If women are considered second-class citizens, or third-class citizens, men can with impunity disrespect us and consider us less than equals and that is a civil rights issue. It is a civil rights issue, a human rights issue.’

  The 2018 Golden Globes in Hollywood was seen as a watershed moment for women. They wore black on the red carpet, with pins on their lapels saying ‘Time’s Up’, and many female stars made speeches or references to women’s equality.

  And the night will be remembered for a powerful speech by Oprah Winfrey, which some saw as a dry run for a possible presidential campaign: ‘For too long women have not been heard or believed if they dared speak their truth to the power of men. But their time is up. Their time is up. Their time is up.’

  It was a night of inspiring speeches, of protests well made, and of optimism that things are changing. But the awards were still dominated by men. ‘And here are the all-male nominees,’ said Natalie Portman, the presenter for the Best Director award, pointedly.

  There is, of course, a direct line connecting Trump’s election, the women’s marches and the #metoo movement that emerged in late 2017. It was, in part, a backlash against the conditions that allowed Trump to win the presidency despite the credible allegations of sexual harassment and assault made against him. The momentum has also propelled record numbers of women running for political office. You can make out the contours of a movement that could shape American politics sooner than we think.

  I am worried, though, by some of the coverage of the issue. When Matt Lauer was fired from NBC’s Today show in America, he was replaced by a woman, long-time reporter Hoda Kotb. It was widely welcomed and it broke the long-established tradition of a male–female presenting format on morning shows. It was the right move at the right time, in many ways. But in making that point, Brian Stelter, the CNN media correspondent, said this: ‘It’s a logical move for NBC, especially in the wake of Lauer’s abrupt exit amid complaints about inappropriate sexual behaviour at work…’

  Now, I see what he’s getting at. But his sentiment seems to be that it’s a logical move because clearly no male presenter can be trusted not to behave in an inappropriate way. And that is, frankly, outrageous. The guilty party here was Matt Lauer; not men in general. But it’s hard to make that point when the bigger issue − the often appalling and unfair treatment of women in the workplace − is the one that rightly has all the momentum. And, of course, women shouldn’t have to work in an all-female work place to feel safe.

  And money is part of that unfair treatment, too – pay, of course, is at the heart of the gender equality debate. And a group of female presenters and reporters at the BBC took umbrage at the pay inequality exposed at the corporation after it was forced to list those earning more than £150,000.

  The women wrote public lett
ers of complaint and threatened action unless the gender pay gap was closed. The BBC’s China editor, Carrie Gracie, actually resigned over the issue, a move that caused considerable embarrassment to the BBC. Hers seemed an open-and-shut case, as it was revealed she was earning 50 per cent less than her male colleagues doing an equivalent job.

  But, when it comes to presenters, the pay issue is fraught with difficulty. I have always negotiated with my agent the best contracts I can. It depends when you negotiate, with whom you negotiate, and your importance to your employer at any one time.

  I have no idea what my female presenter colleagues were earning at ITN. But sometimes you negotiate different hours or a different number of days. Sometimes one presenter has much more experience than another; sometimes the roles differ in a way that is not obvious to the viewer. It’s complicated.

  But when there is a clear pattern of women being treated unequally, then sexism obviously exists. And at the BBC and some other broadcasters that was certainly found to be the case. However, the BBC dealt with the issue in a blundering fashion. First, they agreed to publicize the pay of their staff; then they made great play of highly paid male presenters agreeing to pay cuts. This is nonsense. It is not about some men earning too much, it is about women earning too little.

  It is a highly paid world at the top of the TV presenting ladder, but it is also competitive. I do not begrudge anyone earning as much as they can achieve. I do believe that the pay gap must be closed… but upwards for women, not downwards for men.

  Cristiane Amanpour backs Carrie Gracie: ‘Women should be paid the same for doing the same job. It’s not rocket science, and until that happens we won’t be taken seriously.’

  The correspondents’ office I walked into at BBC Television Centre in the early eighties was an almost exclusively male habitat. Kate Adie was the only woman in there, apart from the office PA. She was one of the very few women correspondents around at that time; she was certainly the most famous.

  Kate was very helpful to me when I joined, and made a point of telling me to put real thought into the writing. ‘The pictures are the important thing in television,’ she told me, ‘but good pictures can be made really special by the right words… and sometimes the right words are no words.’

  I have never forgotten that. What she means is that sometimes the pictures tell the story and words get in the way, detract from what the viewer is seeing. Sometimes no words are needed. It was a great piece of advice.

  She was renowned for her courage under fire, but she was pretty gutsy in the office, too. I really admired the way she held her own in the alpha-male-dominated environment of the BBC correspondents’ office. She was a fearsome customer, even when you were on her side.

  When I left to join ITN, I felt like I was off to sup with the devil. They were the enemy in her eyes, and she could barely conceal her contempt when I quit.

  A few years later, we came up against each other when we were both reporting in Bosnia. We were using the same satellite dish, operated by a news agency, for our live reports back to London. I had a ten-minute window just before the BBC’s slot.

  Sometimes in live telly, things change, and on this occasion my report was delayed a few minutes because of another breaking story. I was just about to go on air when Kate came up to me shouting something about how it was her turn and she needed to get in place. I managed to mumble that I was about to go live when she shoved me out of the way, took her place in front of the camera and demanded to be switched through to the BBC.

  She actually pushed me aside without any concern for my programme whatsoever. Technically, we had encroached into the BBC’s satellite time, but many reporters would have let me do my live piece and then taken their place. Not Kate Adie. No way. I was the competition and she was giving no quarter. It was extraordinary.

  Kate was a very impressive journalist who blazed the trail for women reporters and proved that war reporting and dangerous assignments were not a male preserve. There was a fearlessness about her, and an ability to cut through the nonsense that was remarkable.

  Amanpour − who followed where Adie led − believes we are on the verge of real change not just in TV but in wider society, too: ‘A hash tag doesn’t make a movement and doesn’t change laws, but I think we are at a watershed moment. Things are moving. They really are moving. Women have been playing nice, but sometimes you have to kick a door open and that is what this is about. That is what Trump and the women’s marches and Harvey Weinstein is all about. It’s given a quantum leap to the movement.’

  She’s right, and the industry will be a better place for it.

  MADDY

  WHEN YOUR LIFE is largely about witnessing the suffering, misfortunes and difficulties of other people, it is uncomfortable, disconcerting and not a little painful to find yourself at the centre of the story. I say this with sincerity, even though I was responsible for the decision that made it so; that put myself, or should I say ourselves, in the full glare of the public spotlight.

  I am talking about the illness that almost took my daughter’s life. I am talking about the time in my working life when day after day for many, many months, I would turn up to read the news but only go through the motions. I am talking about the time I thought I would leave in the morning only to find later that my daughter had not survived the day.

  I was presenting News at Ten and I was determined that the two or three million people watching every night wouldn’t realize that anything was wrong. I don’t know why; I suppose I wanted to shut it out. My daughter Maddy had fallen ill with the eating disorder anorexia, and it was threatening to tear our lives apart. In the beginning, going public about what happened to her was the furthest thought from my mind. It was private and there is still a stigma attached to eating disorders specifically and mental health in general. It was too raw an issue, too intrusive and unfair on Maddy. In fact, we went to great lengths to hide her condition even from good friends. We simply did not want it out there. We just wanted her to recover.

  Mercifully, in time, she did. I will explain later why we decided to tell our story, and I hope you won’t judge us for that. I still do not know whether it was the right thing to do or not. You will have your opinion, but we did what we did and I will try to give the reasoning as best I can. But, first, this is what happened.

  It was November 2012, and I was having breakfast in the George Hotel close to the United States Congress in Washington DC. It is a friendly, well-run boutique hotel just a few hundred yards from the ITN offices in the capital. I liked it, felt at home there and particularly appreciated its very impressive wine cellar. I was happy, and our coverage of the final days of the Obama election campaign was going well. I had just spent a couple of sunshine-filled days filming around the Rappahannock River on the Virginia coast. We were interviewing Ryan and Travis Croxton, two brothers who jointly owned a thriving oyster company, but who were hopelessly divided when it came to re-electing Obama. One was Democrat, one Republican. I can’t for the life of me remember which was which but they were good talkers, interesting interviewees and we filmed them out on one of their many boats on an unseasonably warm day. It made for good pictures, a nice story that was in a sense a microcosm of America, and we were about to edit the piece for that night’s News at Ten. Things were good.

  And then the call came. It was my wife and she was clearly upset. She told me she was anxious about Maddy, our eldest daughter, who had slowly been losing weight over a number of weeks. I hadn’t been remotely concerned. She was an athlete who had been training and racing hard that summer and was desperate to get her 800 metres time down. She had competed a few months earlier in the Olympic trials and wanted to improve. If she was losing a little bit of weight, that didn’t seem to me to be a major issue. Little did I know what a problem it would turn out to be. I basically persuaded Catherine that everything would be OK, ended the call and walked across to the office to edit our piece.

  The following day, Catherine called again
to say she had spoken to Maddy, who had assured her that everything was fine. She insisted she could easily put the weight back on and she would do so once her eighteenth birthday later in November was out of the way. I felt reassured by the conversation and supposed that the weight loss was more to do with the party we’d planned for her than anything else. It seemed to me pretty normal behaviour for a girl about to celebrate her eighteenth with a big bash. I was even less worried than I was the previous day.

  I thought nothing more about it until I flew home a few days later, with Barack Obama now re-elected to the White House. Maddy’s party was a lot of fun and involved 120 of her friends in an apparent hurry to get as drunk as possible in a marquee in the garden of our house in Surrey. I had done my best to prevent total chaos. The vodka being served at the bar was watered down, I had bought low-alcohol rosé wine and I had employed security guys from ITN, former marines who accompanied us to war zones around the world, to search guests on arrival for supplies of alcohol. It was necessary. They confiscated enough bottles and half-bottles of spirits to virtually fill a wheelie bin. We managed to get through the night without serious incident, apart from a fight involving a guy who had already injured his neck in a rugby game that day and was wearing a neck brace. We threw him out.

  But as the party wore on, some parents who also came to the party commented about how thin Maddy looked and asked if it had occurred to me that she had lost too much weight. I decided to talk to her about it the following week.

  The conversation did not go well. Maddy was defensive and hostile and didn’t want to engage. She became angry and non-communicative and wanted to close the subject down. She told me it was her life and her body, and pointed out that, since she was eighteen now, I couldn’t do anything about it anyway and she could do whatever she wanted. I reacted badly and it ended in a shouting match. It would not be the last time I would badly misjudge things during her illness. And it very soon became clear that that is exactly what it was. An illness. One I didn’t understand. One I didn’t know anything about. And one I did not deal with at all well. It was the beginning of the most traumatic time in our family life. It was the beginning of a descent into hell.