Justice for Megrahi supporter honoured

[Journalist Kate Adie, a signatory member of the Justice for Megrahi campaign, has been awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University. The following account is from yesterday’s edition of The Edinburgh Reporter:]

Kate Adie was awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition of her contribution to news reporting and our understanding of world events. (...)

The University was delighted to award Kate Adie, one of the UK highest profile journalists, with a Degree of Doctors of Letters at the graduation ceremony held in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.

Dressed in flak jacket, helmet and holding a microphone whilst crouching on front-lines, Kate Adie became an iconic figure associated with breaking news from some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones.  She is particularly well known for her reporting of significant international events including the student uprising in China when she received a gun-shot wound to her elbow whilst reporting events in Tiananmen Square. She has also reported on turbulence and conflicts across the world such as in Northern Ireland, the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, the first Gulf War, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the 1997 uprising in Albania and the civil war in Sierra Leone in 2000.

Kate hung up her flak jacket and helmet in 2003 to become a freelance journalist. Since then she has written five books, been a regular presenter on BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent, and won numerous awards including three Royal Television Society awards, the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1990, the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting, and an OBE in 1993.