US EDITOR OF THE DAILY TE L EGRAPH
In America last week, the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump to be its presidential candidate. The Republican National Convention is the culmination of one of the most unprecedented primary elections in the country’s history. A billionaire television reality star once derided as a ‘buffoon’ has gone on to win the nomination in more votes than any other candidate in the Republican Party’s history. It was also defined by a serious gaffe by his wife Melania. Her speech, delivered with poise amid a tumultuous conference was a resounding success. That was, until the news broke that large passages were identical to Michelle Obama’s 2008 address that she gave at the Democratic National Convention. It was chaos.
This is, of course, set against the stark background of growing racial tensions, with the killings of black men in police custody, and murders of law enforcement officers sparking nationwide protests. Flying from state to state to work, I’ve noticed an increasing proportion of women are now holding their own in what was once a male-dominated press corps.
Many of the great journalists of our time are women. Just read the works of the late Sunday Times’ correspondent Marie Colvin, who died in 2012 while covering the siege of Homs in Syria, Channel 4 News’s international editor Lindsey Hilsum, or The Washington Post’s Beirut bureau chief Liz Sly.
In many ways this is a trade in which the genders are equally matched – you don’t have to have any greater physical strength or size to conduct an interview and write a story. When I was Middle East correspondent at 25, I learnt that being female can help; I was able to travel undercover disguised in local dress, meet with local women and experience a side of the story closed to my male colleagues.
It’s dangerous to generalise but, both in the Middle East and in America alike, I have found that attributes so often ascribed to women – emotional sensitivity and intuition – are particularly useful tools.