Anna Ford was independent television's first female newsreader and in time became one of the most popular and experienced female news presenters in British television. Critics ascribed her early success as a newsreader primarily to her attractive looks, but she subsequently demonstrated even to her detractors that she was more than competent as a presenter and furthermore ready to brave controversy (something she was well used to even as a student, due to her commit­ ted socialist views).

     Before her recruitment as ITN's (Independent Television News) answer to the BBC's popular, though less-vivacious, newsreader Angela Rippon in the late 1970s, Ford had already amassed some experience as a television presenter through her work as a reporter for Reports Action, Man Alive, and other programs. Reflecting her early training in education (e.g., she taught social studies to Irish Revolutionary Army internees in Belfast's Long Kesh prison), she had also worked on broadcasts for the Open University and had then presented Tomorrow's World for a time before resigning because, she explained, she had no wish to become "a public figure." Ironically, this is exactly what she was shortly afterward fated to become as a high-profile newsreader for News at Ten.

     The most controversial stage in Ford's career opened in the early 1980s, when she was one of the "Famous Five" celebrities behind the launching of the ill-starred TV-AM company, for which she presented the breakfast program Good Morning Britain. When the new enterprise failed to attract the required audiences, Ford (and Rippon) were unceremoniously sacked, and it was speculated that her career in television was over. Ford's response to this was to pour a glass of wine on her former employer, Member of Parliament Jonathan Aitken-an incident that hit the headlines and only confirmed Ford's reputation for belligerence.

     Similarly controversial was Ford's widely reported refusal to wear flattering makeup on television to dis­guise the effects of aging, in protest, she said, of the "body fascism" of television bosses who insisted that female newscasters were only there to provide glamor. Critics of her stand attacked her for being aggres­sive and overly feminist (they also expressed shock that she sometimes read the news while not wearing a bra), but many more admired her for her forthrightness. Those who had automat "just a pretty face" were obliged to think again. It was a mark of her success in the argument that, some six years after the TV-AM debacle, Ford-then age 45-was readmitted to the fold as a newsreader for the BBC's prime-time Six O'Clock News. She has also continued to present occasional programs on a wide range of educational and other issues.