Hilary Brown is a Canadian journalist whose career spanned for almost four decades. Brown is regularly characterized as a ground-breaker, for working as a foreign correspondent and a war correspondent, when women rarely posted to dangerous locations.
Hilary Brown | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | Journalist |
Initially she covered Canadian news, for CBC News.[1] In 1971 she made the decision to become a foreign correspondent. Over most of the next four decades she worked as a foreign correspondent and war correspondent for all three of the USA's main networks. In 2015, the New York Times explicitly named Brown's work as an inspiration for women serving as war correspondents today.[2][3]
In 1975 Brown was among the last to evacuate during the fall of Saigon.[4] She reported on how the US Navy took the extraordinary step of pushing recently arrived helicopters that had delivered desperate evacuees, off their aircraft carriers' decks, into the sea, because their hangars were full. Footage of her report of these helicopters being junked has been very widely rebroadcast, including being used in the Oscar winning film, The Deer Hunter.[5]
Personal life
editBrown was married to John Bierman, a notable journalist in his own right, from the early 1970s, until his death in 2006.[6] According to his obituary, in The Guardian, as Brown's career rose in prominence, Bierman would move to be with Brown, and find work, when she took a new foreign correspondent posting.
Career
editBrown spent the years 1971-73 as a freelance correspondent in the Middle East.[7] She joined ABC News in 1973, as a foreign correspondent based in London and Paris in 1973.[1] In 1977 went to work for NBC News as a correspondent in Tel Aviv. She returned to ABC News in 1981, but left in 1984 to join CBLT in Toronto[8] to read the early evening news alongside Fraser Kelly. Kelly retired from journalism in 1986 and she continued to present the broadcasts on her own, until May 24, 1991,[9] when gave up anchoring duties. In late 1992, began a third stint with ABC News, where she continue to work abroad USA, between Cyprus, London, Bosnia and the Gulf, where she covered the Iraq War. Brown finally retired in 2009.
Brown, who had known fellow Canadian Peter Jennings, from before she left Canada to become a foreign correspondent, was quoted numerous times by the authors of Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life.[10]
In 1995, she had described her year this way:[8]
“New York and Switzerland in January. I was in Burma doing a documentary for Nightline in February and March. I was in Vietnam in April for the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Bosnia in May, June and again in July, Turkey in August, back in Bosnia in September, Greenland in October doing a crazy feature on the world’s first Santa Claus summit, and Mali doing a feature on stolen art in sub-Saharan Africa. Then, in December, I was in the Middle East, doing the hand-over to Palestinian self-rule. What a year, huh?"
References
edit- ^ a b Marlene Sanders, Marcia Rock (1994). Waiting for Prime Time: The Women of Television News. University of Illinois Press. pp. 67–69, 72–74, 77, 114, 200, 206, 214. ISBN 9780252063879. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
It was in the early 1970s that a sprinkling of women began to be sent overseas. Hilary Brown, a Canadian reporter on public radio and television, decided by 1971 that foreign news was what she wanted to cover, not the provincial Canadian beat where she found herself.
- ^ Luisita Lopez Torregrosa (2015-08-21). "The rise of the female TV war correspondent as global celebrity". New York Times. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
Williams, a 38-year-old Australian correspondent who has covered China and East Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gaza, Syria and Libya, says she has not noticed any sexism in the workplace but has been sexually harassed in the field. "There are parts of the world — I don't want to name them– where you're more likely to be sexually harassed and that's true whether you're a tourist or a local or a journalist."
- ^ Michael D. Murray (1999). Encyclopedia of Television News. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 288. ISBN 9781573561082. Retrieved 2017-03-13.
On the International front, several women have blazed trails--two of the most are Hilary Brown, a foreign correspondent for ABC News in the 1970s, and Christian Ananpour, who covered the Persian Gulf War for CNN, in 1991.
- ^ Daniel Schwartz (2015-04-30). "The fall of Saigon: how CBC, CTV covered the 1975 events". CBC News. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
Hilary Brown was on one of the last flights to leave the embassy. Her story for ABC from the USS Hancock about ditching the helicopters may be the most famous report from that day. It appears in The Deer Hunter, which won the 1978 Academy Award for best picture.
- ^ "Hilary Brown to give public talk on "The Art of the Interview"". University of British Columbia. 2012. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
Hilary was ABC's first female foreign correspondent, and has interviewed everyone from President Hamid Karzai, Condoleeza Rice and the Shah of Iran to Sidney Poitier, Lawrence Oliver and John le Carre. Her ABC News report on the fall of Saigon appeared in the Oscar-winning film, 'The Deer Hunter.'
- ^ Robert Chesshyre (2006-01-17). "John Bierman: Formidable reporter and popular historian at home in the world's trouble spots". The Guardian. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
Five years later, she became Bierman's second wife. Her career took off, and Bierman followed her postings. Wherever they pitched up, he always got work as a writer or editor.
- ^ Denise Lowe (1999). Women and American Television: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 45. ISBN 9780874369700. Retrieved 2017-03-13.
Hilary Brown, born in Canada, became one of the first female foreign correspondents for ABC in 1973 after working several years as a freelance reporter/stringer in the Middle East.
- ^ a b "Anchors Away". Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- ^ "Television Station History". Canadian communications foundation. June 2013. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
1991: Paul Hunter and Noelle Richardson were now part of the news anchor team. Brandan Connor was doing sports. Beth Harrington and Justin Smallbridge did entertainment. Anchor Hilary Brown left the station on May 24.
- ^ Kate Darnton, Kayce Freed Jennings, Lynn Sherr (2008). Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life. PublicAffairs. p. xii, 23, 29, 41, 44, 49, 67, 239. ISBN 9781586486440. Retrieved 2017-03-13.
Hilary Brown, a fellow Canadian, met Peter at his parents' home in the mid-1960s when she was reporting and anchoring for CBC Radio. She was hired by ABC News and overlapped with Peter when both were based in London. She has worked out of Tehran, Paris, Washington, New York, and Cyprus.
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