KATE ADIE

I have nothing to do with the selection of stories. I'm the reporter.

If I'm in danger then it's usually my fault and it's up to me to get myself out of it. I am not in it just to get an adrenalin rush. No way!

It's totally mistaken to suppose that an armed escort is going to give a journalist any protection - on the contrary, journalists who turn up surrounded by armed personnel are just turning themselves into targets and in even worse danger.

I was timid and frightened as a child. Yours truly did not shin up mountains or do any other kind of adventurous stuff.

When you are covering a life-or-death struggle, as British reporters were in 1940, it is legitimate and right to go along with military censorship, and in fact in situations like that there wouldn't be any press without the censorship.

I've never been one to sit around and eat my heart out. Life's too short.

My job is to get to the heart of a story, to find out what's really going on; to get it verified and, then, to get it out to as many people as possible as fast as.

War zones are dangerous, protests can be violent, also, natural disasters are difficult to cover, so there are going to be risks.

I wrote in the book very specifically what I wanted to write about, period, and left it at.

I have never been attracted to any kind of violence.

The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.

I sailed through my childhood with a complete lack of any drama.

There was no equal pay law when I started working. I was no different to any other woman in any other job at the time.

I never desired to go into war zones. I never had any thought about it. It sort of just happened as part of the job.

Beslan, where the Russian authorities stopped live coverage of the school being stormed, was an illustration of the progress we still have to make.

Up until about 12 years ago we never, ever, wore flak jacket or helmets but now the nastiness has got worse.

In any war, there is a concealment of certain kinds of setbacks because it's propaganda for the enemy.

On the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.

It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions, reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought.

In Sierra Leone last year there was just the two of us hanging out of a helicopter and, when we were in Bosnia, I drove an armoured vehicle, thousands of miles.

On the whole, when the unexpected danger happens to you, you're thinking so fast, you're thinking so hard, every bit of you is alive to 'What should I do?' 'What can I do?' There isn't a lot of time for contemplation.

I will never retire.

I don't sit there and speculate. I'm not that sort of person. It wastes time, actually.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

I keep telling myself to calm down, to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited, but I still care a lot about liberty, freedom of speech and expression, and fairness in journalism.