Kari Blackburn

Kari Boto (née Blackburn; 30 March 1954 – 27 June 2007) was a BBC reporter and senior executive who specialised in Africa.

Biography

Personal life Blackburn was born in Somerset on 30 March 1954 to Irish educationist Robert Blackburn and Esther Archer. She took her A-levels at United World College of the Atlantic and later studied in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Churchill College, Cambridge and graduated with First Class Honours.

BBC career Blackburn joined the BBC in 1977 as a news trainee, and continued to work for the broadcasting corporation until her death. In 1992, she became editor of the BBC Marshall Plan of the Mind Trust, a "multimedia education project" for the former Soviet republics. In October 2006, she became director of international operations at the BBC World Service Trust, an "independently-funded development charity of the BBC".

Death Blackburn died on 27 June 2007; she drowned in the North Sea seaport of Felixstowe, Suffolk, England, close to her home in Ipswich. Her death came three days before the expiration of her BBC contract Her body was recovered and transported by a RAF helicopter to Ipswich Hospital, but she could not be resuscitated.

John Ssebaana Kizito, president of Uganda's Democratic Party and former mayor of Kampala, paid tribute to Blackburn in early July, writing: "The death of Kari Blackburn comes as a great shock to me. It is as unexpected as it is devastating."

An inquest, held on 16 May 2008, Blackburn suffered from "mental and physical illness" after assuming her position at BBC World Service Trust and felt "isolated and under-supported".

The BBC released a statement in response to the coroner's judgment, describing Blackburn as "a very popular leader, with great humanity and compassion" who "was devoted to the BBC". On news of her suicide, hundreds of people working for the BBC World Service and BBC Newsgathering signed a petition demanding an independent inquiry into the circumstances leading up to her death and the role that the work environment may have played in her depression; the inquiry was undertaken by the Deputy Director General's head of HR.