Veteran journalist Kate Webb calls it quits, maybe<\/p>\n
By Ivy Susanti<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Thirty-seven years have flown by, leaving New
\nZealand-born journalist Kate Webb with first-hand memories of
\nmany momentous events.<\/p>\n
Her work has also given her a deep understanding of life and
\npeople. She was witness to much political turmoil, including the
\npolitical transition in Jakarta in the mid-1960s, the fall of
\nSaigon in the 1970s, the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the Soviet
\noccupation of Afghanistan, the People Power movement in the
\nPhilippines that ousted Marcos in the 1980s, the assassination of
\nRajiv Gandhi in the early 1990s and the Gulf War.<\/p>\n
She came back to Jakarta for another political crisis in the
\nlate 1990s, saw the Hong Kong handover and reported the self-
\ndetermination vote in East Timor.<\/p>\n
Webb has lived through many difficult and tense situations,
\nbut this has not diminished her wit or her sharp analytical
\nskills. Though the years are beginning to show in the lines
\naround her piercing brown eyes and the flecks of gray in her long
\nbrown hair, these years have left Webb with a wealth of
\nknowledge.<\/p>\n
\"It's strange to see the same things happening again,
\nsometimes under another name. That is the most interesting thing
\nabout catching history,\" she told The Jakarta Post in a recent
\ninterview at the Agence France Presse office in Menteng, Central
\nJakarta.<\/p>\n
Being a journalist is not just a career for Webb, who was born
\n58 years ago in Christchurch. \"I'm recording history,\" she says
\nin her distinctive deep, whispery voice.<\/p>\n
She credits her family background with helping her understand
\nthe significance of events. \"My mother was a historian and my
\nfather was a political scientist. I was brought up in an academic
\natmosphere.\"<\/p>\n
She earned her bachelor's degree in symbolic logic from the
\nSchool of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne in 1964,
\ngraduating with honors. Her career as a journalist, she says,
\nbegan by chance, recalling her start as a reporter for the local
\nNews Limited newspaper in Sydney.<\/p>\n
\"It was in 1964. I was making a stained glass window for a
\nchurch and I broke one. I didn't have the money to reimburse the
\nchurch. At first I looked for a job as a secretary at a newspaper
\ncompany. But I couldn't do shorthand and they said they couldn't
\nhire me as secretary. So they put me to work as a reporter cadet.<\/p>\n
\"You know when you start as a cadet, in the old day's cadet
\nsystem, the first thing you do is go with the journalists on
\ntheir assignments. It's horrible ... you know, shit work ... like
\ngetting the ashtray for the people who smoke,\" she says with a
\nlaugh.<\/p>\n
\"When you're a cadet, you spend about six months learning
\nshorthand and the job and then you become a junior reporter.\"<\/p>\n
But it was from her early work as a gopher that Webb learned
\nhow to suss out a breaking story.<\/p>\n
\"When you're still a cadet, you have to see all the breaking
\nnews from the news agencies, like Reuters, and when you get it
\nyou have to tell your editor immediately. I think that's how I
\ndeveloped the ability,\" she says.<\/p>\n
She praised the system which allowed young journalists to
\nlearn in real-life situations rather than in the classroom. \"I am
\nvery skeptical of any journalism course. When you have earned a
\ndegree, you automatically 'become' a journalist. In fact, it
\ntakes experience and practice to be a journalist.\"<\/p>\n
From 1965 to 1967, Webb worked for the Sydney Daily Mirror and
\nThe Australian, starting as a reporter covering education and
\nreligion.<\/p>\n
Her life changed when she was hired by United Press
\nInternational in 1967. She was sent on various assignments in
\nSaigon from 1967 to 1969 as a political reporter, then went back
\nto Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a general reporter from 1969 to
\n1970. She was promoted to UPI's Cambodia bureau chief, where she
\nworked from 1970 to 1973, with one year at the Hong Kong desk.<\/p>\n
Then she was the Jakarta bureau chief from 1974 to 1975,
\nManila's bureau chief from 1975 to 1977 and the regional chief
\nbased in Singapore in 1977.<\/p>\n
Unforgettable<\/p>\n
Webb's posting in Phnom Penh was unforgettable, not only for
\nher but also for her family and the press community as well.<\/p>\n
It was at the height of the Vietnam War in 1971 when Webb,
\njust 28, was captured by North Vietnamese forces along with six
\nother people during a battle for the strategic Highway Four.<\/p>\n
A woman's corpse was found a few days later, and Webb was
\nfeared to have become another casualty of a conflict which had
\nalready claimed many lives, including those of several friends
\nand colleagues.<\/p>\n
UPI announced her death and the New York Times ran her
\nobituary. Webb recalls that Time and Newsweek magazines also
\npublished her obituary.<\/p>\n
But on the day a memorial service was to be held in Australia,
\nwhere most of Webb's family had moved from New Zealand, Webb and
\nfive fellow captives walked out of the jungle, freed by their
\ncaptors after 23 terrifying and exhausting days.<\/p>\n
AFP said the group was met by an amazed Cambodian officer who
\nstared and said: \"Miss Webb, you're supposed to be dead.\"<\/p>\n
When she recalls these moments, she only says: \"It's very
\ninteresting (silence). You always wonder what people think of
\nyou.\"<\/p>\n
She lost two of her colleagues and she was left alone covering
\nthe grueling war which ended four years later. All she says of
\nthis time is, \"I felt what other people would feel ... terrible.\"<\/p>\n
It was not her only near escape. AFP, in a tribute to Webb at
\nthe end of her career, said she was almost scalped by a drug-
\ncrazed mujahedeen in Kabul, hiding on a hotel window ledge for
\nhours while he hunted for her, still clutching a handful of her
\nhair.<\/p>\n
And she once emerged unscathed from the rubble of a rocket
\nattack in Vietnam, dusted herself off and went straight back to
\nwork.<\/p>\n
During the 1975 scramble out of Saigon, Webb continued to file
\nstories (in the days before mobile phones and laptops) as
\nhelicopter after helicopter carrying hundreds of panicked
\nrefugees landed on the deck of the USS Blue Ridge.<\/p>\n
\"I was incredibly lucky,\" is all she says about these
\nexperiences.<\/p>\n
Similarly, when she is asked about what it was like to be a
\nwoman reporting on war in a traditionally male-dominated field,
\nshe says simply: \"I didn't take notice, I didn't see anything
\nstrange.\"<\/p>\n
Webb started working at AFP in 1983. She was posted in Jakarta
\nuntil 1987, with roving assignments in Sri Lanka, Manila, South
\nPacific, Noumea and Pakistan. She then worked as the South Asian
\ndeputy bureau chief based in New Delhi and the bureau chief in
\nKabul from 1987 to 1992.<\/p>\n
After ending her assignment covering the Gulf War, she was
\nappointed as temporary deputy bureau chief in Bangkok, then moved
\nto the Hong Kong desk. From 1993 to 1998 she was the bureau chief
\nin Seoul before moving to Jakarta as a deputy bureau chief.<\/p>\n
She says that during more than 10 years in Indonesia, she was
\ndeported three times during president Soeharto's rule, with the
\nstandard explanation: her reports posed a threat to national
\nstability.<\/p>\n
Human nature<\/p>\n
Such experiences taught Webb a lot about human nature. She
\nsays \"the government is made up of people\" and not all of them
\nthink the same way.<\/p>\n
\"In my case, there are always some people in the government,
\nonly some of them, not all. I could not return to Jakarta, and
\nalso to some other countries, because of some people.\"<\/p>\n
She recalls when she was covering the famous 1974 meeting
\nbetween Soeharto and then Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam
\nabout East Timor.<\/p>\n
She says that one night the meeting participants went to the
\nDieng plateau in Central Java to see a traditional dance where
\nthe dancers went into a trance and walked on glass shards.<\/p>\n
\"I was quite near Soeharto. He came over to me and asked me,
\n'Do you know the history of Dieng?' I said 'No, Sir.' So he told
\nme a story about it. After the dance stopped, a group of military
\n(personnel) jumped all over me and told me to never to speak to
\nthe president.\"<\/p>\n
\"I did not speak to him, it was the president who spoke to
\nme.\"<\/p>\n
She says she has a postulate about reporting. \"If you get the
\nfacts right, other people have less room to lie.\" That's why, she
\nsays, she would term her work as documentation of history rather
\nthan just reporting.<\/p>\n
\"It takes a lot of work to document ... I always stick to the
\nfacts.\"<\/p>\n
In early August, Webb decided to retire. \"I am totally burned
\nout. I have spent nearly 40 years for my career, covering
\nfinancial crises, nuclear crises, crisis after crisis.\"<\/p>\n
But she is typically modest about her achievements, saying her
\nwork is not finished yet, though what she will do next is still
\nunclear. \"I won't settle down. I don't really have a home.\"<\/p>\n
A post teaching at a school of journalism is definitely out of
\nthe question. \"I would ask the students to go and work for a
\npaper.\"<\/p>",
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