Bill Kay tells the Truth about Diana's Death

Like singers and actors, there is a layer of journalists who achieve fame in their own country but are hardly even heard of elsewhere. Correct me if I'm wrong, but among the Brits in this category is Kate Adie, BBC foreign correspondent par excellence. She is bound to have appeared on foreign television, but each country trusts its own foreign reporters and is never sure of those from other countries, even if they have the BBC objectivity guarantee stamped on their foreheads.
I met Adie today, swinging through LA on a tour of the west coast and Hawaii. She is as tough-as-boots in the long tradition of America's Martha Gelhorn and another great Brit I was lucky enough to meet year ago, Clare Hollingworth.
Hollingworth (long retired, now age 98 and living in her beloved Hong Kong) and Adie are as detached and matter of fact as good journalists should be, especially when reporting historic events of huge emotional pull, but they have very different styles. Hollingworth was a print journalist in an era when newspapers like the one she wrote for - the Daily Telegraph - insisted on a much more formal style, no dumbing down. Indeed, the Telegraph in those days read like a long Ministry of Defence or Foreign Office memo, even when EW Swanton was writing about cricket (in fact he was the most pompous of the lot, but that's another story).
I suspect themore analytical Hollingworth would not have come across as larger-than-life on screen as Adie did - retired from the front line since 2003, now aged 62, but presenting the long-running From Our Own Correspondent from whichever hotel bedroom she happens to be in each week. I don't mean to suggest that she has a succession of sexual partners, just that she travels around a lot, but she has never married and her private life is well guarded. There was a rather odd chap hanging around in the background today, though, wearing a formal shirt with jeans, who had his eyes closed during much of Adie's talk, as if he had heard it many times before.
Adie comes across as very solid, very British, very reliable and no doubt knew exactly what to do when she was dropped into a war zone. There is always a story behind people whose accents don't match their hometown, and Adie comes from Sunderland yet speaks with an accent which the Observer newspaper described in 2001 as "half marchioness, half staff sergeant". It gives her not just a schoolmarmish but a full-blown headmistress air, especially in combination with her stocky appearance and sensible hair and frock.
She has four operational rules:
1. See things for yourself whenever possible, because 'I know, I saw it' is far more convincing than 'so and so told me'. It's a rough and ready business, so approach strangers carefully on a story because you are not going to get the red carpet treatment.
2. Talk to those who are there. Use Your own eyes to gather evidence and check what you are told. People lie to you and everyone likes to claim victory.
3. Verify the facts by asking people questions individually. There will always be missing pieces but you get the major parts of the story.
4. You tell everyone as fast as possible. Being second is rotten but you've got to get it right first time.
As an example of this, she told us about reporting the crash which killed Princess Diana in 1997.
'I was in the tunnel where the crash occurred about five hours after it happened,' she recalled, 'and I was shown around by one of the chief French investigators. He pointed out the damage to the car and the tunnel and said it was clear that the car had been travelling at a very high speed, far higher than the tunnel could cope with. Then we went to the Ritz hotel a few hours later and the barman at the Paris Ritz said Henri Paul, the driver, was "drunk as a skunk". Yet it has taken ten years to establish these facts, against the opposition of Mohammed Fayed.' Note she did not use the 'Al Fayed' form which the man tries to insist on. That is an aristocratic designation in Egypt, like von in Germany, and old hands are scrupulous about insisting that Fayed was not entitled to it.
Adie's explanation of her career was that it 'just happened', and she 'just happened' to be sent to London by the BBC. That contradicts the views of school and BBC contemporaries, who claim she was highly ambitious and determined to reach the goals she set. That is certainly the impression she gives, regarding her career as a long contest in which she could either be a winner or loser, and she was hell-bent on becoming a winner. But then, if she didn't have that attitude she would probably have been killed by now in some sandy shell-hole. However, I don't think she will take easily to retirement, or anything like it.
But, by her own analysis, Adie may be stepping back from the front line at the right time. She shares the growing view that the audiences for TV news, as for newspapers, are declining, mainly because the young are not picking up the habit.
However, Adie has a slightly different explanation from most. She believes people are becoming less interested in news because, in developed countries at any rate, there is less threat or risk of invasion. In other words, many people followed world news out of self-interest, in case they might be directly affected. Fear was a big motivator. But, despite terrorism, people are more relaxed since the end of the Cold War. There is, for the time being at least, little chance of an Orwellian test of strength between superpowers.
I think Adie is being too simplistic. Voting numbers are falling drastically in the US and UK, and that is not purely out of fear. Standards of education and cynicism about politicians play big parts too, and if you are not interested in voting you have less reason to keep up to date with the decisions of those you might or might not be voting for.
I wonder, though, if Adie's point is valid, whether TV, newspaper and internet news audiences will revive as China gets into its stride? This is blog for another day, but my hunch is that once China has become established as an economic giant it will want to flex military muscle. World wars have not been abolished.