Charlene White - ITV News anchor - Inspire Aspire Journalism Talk 7 February 2019

Charlene White, ITV News Anchor visited our Year 12 and 13 Media Studies and Sociology students on 07/02/2019.  Some of the topics covered included:

A discussion of the various routes into journalism from degrees to apprenticeships including information about this year's exciting Media trust breaking into news  competition (please visit www.breakingintonews.co.uk for more information)

The significance of her home background and how this lead to certain life choices:

• Charlene engaged the students with her personal story of how she effectively became a second parent/young carer to her two younger siblings due to the untimely illness and death of her mother. She shared this poignant moment in her life which clearly forced her to take responsibility early, often attending parents evening and supporting her widowed father in many other respects. This impacted on where she chose to read for her degree and the jobs she accepted.
• Being of West Indian origin and the pressures of being influenced to take on ‘respectable’ careers from her immigrant parents (who between them worked five jobs to support their family). Charlene talked about the importance of persevering with one’s dreams despite opposition. Her message to our students to work hard; be determined and to inspire others to in essence ‘believe the dream’ resonated with many of them.
• Charlene is also from a working class background and discussed her pride in being able to genuinely and tangibly connect with integrity to local issues which affect local people in London from the joys of being a music journalist to tackling and covering of the more serious and disturbing events such as the murder of Lee Rigby and Grenfell.

Career highlights:

• From working in America to meeting and interviewing her role model Maya Angelou, Charlene definitely impressed our students with her witty anecdotes (including pushing a then unknown John Legend off her presenting chair and ‘chillin’ with JayZ).

Challenges:

• Charlene highlighted the importance of ‘representing yourself’, challenging the ‘status quo’ and holding people to account for their actions/beliefs as being the only way to save the ever changing media industry.
• Her discussion of the impact of online trolling levelled against her by far right groups demonstrated not only some of the potential disadvantages of being in the public eye but also her resilience against cyber bullying.