BBC producer and former head of the Africa Service; Born March 30, 1954; Died June 27, 2007. KARI Blackburn, one of the BBC's most respected producers and executives, who spent more than 30 years with the corporation, has died aged 53.
The body of the journalist was plucked out of the sea by an RAF helicopter and taken to Ipswich Hospital where her Ugandan-born husband, Tom Boto, works as a senior gynecologist.
Police sources say there were signs of life when she arrived at the hospital but soon after she died. They are treating her death as suicide.
Before she walked into the sea, witnesses told police officers that they had seen the mother-of-three sitting on the beach at Old Felixstowe with her head in her hands.
Those at the BBC who knew her best say she was suffering from severe depression after being persuaded to take early retirement, and after being unable to fly to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, on June 27 when the BBC celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Swahili Service which she had done so much to strengthen and widen into East Africa's most popular radio station.
"Kari was a very popular leader, who was devoted to the BBC World Service and the programme makers in it," the BBC said in a statement. "Her kindness was legendary."
Blackburn was born in Somerset in 1954, daughter of the legendary Trinity College, Dublin educationalist, Robert Blackburn, who was a major force behind the United World College movement.
After graduating from Churchill College, Cambridge with a first-class degree in social and political science, Blackburn went to work as a primary school teacher in Tanzania, returning to the UK in 1977 when she joined the BBC as a graduate trainee.
While there, she helped send a young African with a hole in his heart to have an operation in London. When she met her husband, she discovered that boy was his cousin.
Her rise within the BBC was meteoric. She was made head of the BBC's Africa Service and she later helped to popularise the corporation's Arabic Service. At the time of her death she was director of International Operations for the BBC's World Service Trust.
More than 150 BBC staffers and ex-staffers attended her funeral at Ipswich last Friday and a celebration of her life service will be held at St Brides, the journalists' church in London, later this summer.
She is survived by her husband and their three children, Kassalina, Jonan and Tony.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article