2009/2010 Student Journalism Conference Programme

Kate Adie OBE

Kate Adie, author and broadcaster, became a familiar figure to viewers through her work as the BBC’s Chief News Correspondent. She is considered to be among the very finest reporters, as well as one of the first British women, sending despatches from danger zones around the world. She is also familiar as the presenter of Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent and a guest on many other radio and television programmes.

Kate has been named “Reporter of the Year” twice by the Royal Television Society; the first occasion was for her coverage of the SAS end to the Iranian Embassy siege in 1973. She also won the Monte Carlo International Golden Nymph Award in 1981 and 1990, and was awarded an OBE in 1993.

Barney Rowan
Barney Rowan has covered Northern Ireland's war and peace since the mid 1980s.

He is a former BBC security editor in Belfast and is the author of four books on the peace process. Four times he has been a category winner in the Northern Ireland Journalist of the Year Awards, including twice as specialist journalist. His reporting spans all the major developments in the peace process - ceasefires, decommissioning and the formal ending of the IRA's war in 2005.

He is now a frelance writer ad broadcaster and is a regular contributor to the Belfast Telegraph. At present he is compiling a major archive covering his contacts with the IRA, loyalist organisations, security forces and politicians, and speaks regularly on the challenges of living in and reporting on conflict. Rowan has been described by the award-winning author Peter Taylor as "the real insider who knows all the main players".

Eamonn Mallie
Is a highly respected Northern Ireland journalist. Eamonn began his jounrnalistic career as an Irish researcher for RTE and subsequently trained as a BBC radio current affairs producer. He joined Downtown radio in 1979 as their reporter and political correspondent and since then has worked for both national and international programmes reporting on Irish affairs.

He has being involved in numerous news breaking stories from the release of Ben Dunne of Dunnes Stores after his kidnapping to the commencing of the Hunger Strike in 1981, which resulted in death of 10 men,

He has interviewed senior politicians including former American Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, the past four Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and all Irish prime ministers since the early 1970’s.

Eamonn has written several books relating to the troubles in Northern Ireland and won the Sony Award for Local and Regional Lifetime Achievement in 2008.