Chapter 1: Who is Cathy Newman and what are her career highlights?
Hello and welcome to The Midpoint. My guest today is a serious news broadcaster, but I met her for the first time on Have I Got News For You last year, so I know she's also got a very healthy funny bone too.
A teenage Cathy Newman was on her way to becoming a violinist or a lawyer until she was inspired by the incredible broadcaster Kate Adie, synonymous with war zones and disaster reporting in the 80s and 90s. And then Cathy decided she too wanted to become a journalist.
She graduated from Oxford University and worked her way up through newspapers at first, The Guardian, The Independent and then the FT. And at just 23 years old, she was a political correspondent. She began her TV career in 2000 and in 2006 joined Channel 4, where she has been for the last two decades.
at the heart of many important campaigns, showing her skills as an investigative journalist time and time again on stories about political impropriety, sexism in the corridors of power and paedophilia, to name a few. She shone a light on so many important topics and has carried on writing as well. Her book, Bloody Brilliant Women, was highly acclaimed and is well worth a read.
In January, it was announced she's leaving Channel 4 and heading to Sky to be the host of their 7 o'clock daily politics show. taking on new podcasts and leading more special investigations for them. And I'm really excited about chatting to Cathy.
There are so many things I want to talk about, but particularly taking on a huge challenge like this and a big career change in the period of life that only a couple of decades ago we'd got used to seeing women disappear completely from our screens. Let's meet Cathy.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Cathy to become a journalist?
Welcome to the Midpoint. Thank you. Great to be here. Well, you've got a lot going on at the moment. You're a very busy woman. And in your introduction, I talked about the fact that actually a couple of generations ago, this move, this huge career move that you're making right now in this week, I know you've already left Channel 4 and you're about to start your show on Sky.
In fact, this might be going out just after you've started. Yeah. It might not have happened because you probably would have been off the screen. The visibility of women over the age of 50 has increased dramatically in the last couple of days.
No, it's really heartening, actually, because when I first started as a TV presenter, everybody was sort of like, oh, do you think you'll be able to carry on broadcasting into your 50s? And I was like, well, yeah, why not? You know, all the men do. But yeah, funnily enough, in the last few years, no one asks that question anymore, which is great. You know, that is something to celebrate, isn't it?
Chapter 3: How has Cathy's career evolved over the years?
It is.
And it still feels lovely that we are lucky enough to be in the generation that are here.
Yeah. And I suppose you're always pinching yourself thinking, well, maybe maybe this is my last gig and then I'll get shuffled off. But no, I mean, I feel now and also I always think that I feel like I'm in my 20s still, you know. or whatever, it was Jon Snow, my presenting colleague at Channel 4 News for many years, always used to say, you know, that he felt like a teenager and behaved like one.
He didn't quite, but, you know. I sort of always feel mentally that I'm still young and, you know, running around. I've got loads of energy and everything. And I feel that now, when you look at women in their 50s several decades ago, our mother's generation, they kind of behaved older at 50, 51 I am.
And I feel now that there is this expectation that 51, you're just beginning to get into your stride and you're having all this fun and you've got all this experience and you care less about things and it's very energising.
And your kids are older, so the responsibility of that day-to-day parenting, which tends to still fall on women's shoulders, even if you do split it completely evenly, kind of orchestrator of the boss. The choreographer of the family diary in the house as well seems to matter less and less, doesn't it?
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Chapter 4: What challenges does Cathy face in her new role at Sky News?
So you've got a freedom. But you should have been equipped for this period of life because in looking at various things to do with your kind of family life and past, your husband wrote the manual, literally.
The midlife man? Yeah. Oh, he had forgotten about that book. 20 years forgotten about that. He wrote it when he was nowhere near midlife. That's what I was going to ask you.
I mean, this is a guy who was preparing for the future because he must have been in his 30s when he wrote this. So was that kind of something that was concerning you quite a lot in your 30s, how midlife was going to run?
He also wrote a book about hypochondria as well. And I remember the Daily Mail trying to interview us as a couple about what was it like to live with someone with hypochondria. And I was like, well, he's not really that bad. I really killed the interview, to be honest. But so, you know, it's funny because he's never been a kind of like old fogey or young fogey or whatever.
Chapter 5: How does Cathy view the visibility of women in media today?
So I think he just got a bit confused that midlife. He thought, oh, I must be in my 30s. And I'm like, no, you know, now we're in our prime now anyway. Yeah.
Well, midlife means different things to different people. And I think, you know, there's an official I think it's 38, the economic and social research. Is that right? 38 to about 58. But it's shifting all the time because it's not actually to do with lifespan necessarily.
It's this age of potentially reaching a period that you think you should have contentment and you're not quite sure what that means. And there's a lot of kind of philosophical questions going around your mind. Does that resonate at all? And did that come into your thinking about your shift?
When you think you have contentment, that's... I always think sometimes... Because sometimes I say to my husband, oh, God, I wish I just did 20% less and then I'd be much happier.
Chapter 6: What does Cathy think about the current political landscape?
Because I'm always busy. I'm always late. And, you know, I was late here today and that was probably my fault, although I did blame the tube strike. Yes, I always think, oh, I'll be happier if I just go a bit slower. And my husband says, you really don't know yourself because you will only be happy if you're manically busy. So what is contentment?
And I suppose I did think, you know, when I'd been on Channel 4 News 20 years. I suppose for the last few years of that, I did begin to think, right, what do I do next? What does the next chapter of my life look like? You know, how do I take control of that? And and I suppose how do I how am I the author of my own destiny?
Because otherwise you can just sort of almost especially I think as a woman, you sort of. get shoehorned into a way of life that perhaps you haven't really decided whether you want that. You might want something different. So I did take a few years just to think about, well, what do I do next and what would make me happy?
Chapter 7: How does Cathy cope with online abuse and criticism?
And, you know, I do think the thing about the Sky News show that I'm launching is that it's going to feel really different. It's going to feel really there's going to be a lot of personality in there. There's going to be a sort of energy and informality. It's built very much for YouTube as well as the Sky News channel.
So there's that feeling of doing something different, which is very bracing, very energising. And I think that makes me happy. A bit scary? Oh, God, yeah. I mean, yeah. And there have been times when I wake up in the middle of the night and think, what the hell am I doing? You know, I've I had this very stable, very contented professional life and I've just thrown it up in the air.
But you need to live a bit. You need to go. Let's do something does make me a bit.
fearful I'm mostly excited I'm just a tiny percentage so do you think you sent out the kind of message subliminally that you needed this opportunity or did you pick the phone up or somebody else put the phone up and say we've had a call you're getting down to the nitty-gritty now
Chapter 8: What insights does Cathy share about resilience and ambition in journalism?
I think I had, I knew the team at Sky over many years. You know what it's like in the industry. You sort of get to know people, don't you? So I'd had a sort of initial contact, initial breakfast meeting. And then things sort of picked up over the summer, last summer. My agent got a call and then we sort of... Things don't work quickly in TV, do they?
I love it. I quite like that, though. Yeah, I knew that Match of the Day was going to change a long time before it was announced and everything. And it feels sometimes like, oh, come on, why does this have to take so long? But it does take time to make big decisions, and this is a big show.
Well, I think I also needed time to get my head around a big shift. And, you know, I kept on sort of trying it out in my head, you know, what would this feel like, having my own show, you know, doing it in a very different way.
Your name at the top of the shop.
Yeah, success or failure, my name's on the tin. And I just had to sort of roll that around a bit and see what that would feel like. But, you know, in the end, the offer from Sky of this, my own programme, 7pm, so, you know, the same time slot as my old show, so not too much change all at once. Politics, I love politics. I've always loved politics.
It's returning to Westminster for me 15 years after I left it as a correspondent. So all of that, plus the investigations that I'll be doing, which I love doing at Channel 4, and I'll be doing the same sort of hard-hitting investigations at Sky. They've got this brand-new documentaries team, which is absolutely fantastic, actually run by someone from Channel 4.
And I'll be doing a podcast, which I'll launch in the autumn. So all of that put together, it was kind of impossible to say no, really.
And you had that wealth of experience, that wisdom and that... that sense of confidence that comes, I think, with turning 50 and getting into that decade, I think, brings with it, it's now or never, really, in professional terms. And that's for men as well, I think, isn't it? In our industry, I think, in the sense that you're not going to necessarily get those opportunities when you turn 70.
But I wonder in some ways if women get more confident as they age and maybe, well, I suppose it's hard to generalise, isn't it? Maybe some men lose a bit of confidence. Maybe some men get more and more confident as well. So maybe it's hard to generalise. I think if you're still there as a woman...
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