CLOZE TEST: Non-stop news

Kate Adie, the chief foreign correspondent of a television news company talks about her job.

The limitations of broadcasting were brought home to me I was reporting recently on a crisis on the other side of the world. days we are faced with doing non-stop broadcasting. Even a television channel does not to have non-stop news output, like the one I work for, it has non-stop news input. Twenty-four coverage is complicated by any time difference. In my recent assignment we were eight hours ahead the time in London. The whole team, about 25 people, gathered at 1.30 a.m. to discuss things and get the camera crews out on the streets. lunchtime we were editing, and by mid-afternoon we were doing live two-way reports for Breakfast Time News. By the evening the lunchtime news being done, and by midnight we were into the Six O’ Clock News, with another live two-way report for the Nine O’ Clock News at five in the morning. The problem with such twenty-four hour operation, from the lack of sleep, is that you end up broadcasting rather reporting. People say, “What was it out there’” And I say, “How do I know?” I have spent more time on the streets if I not had to prepare so bulletins.