During her time as an ITN reporter, she covered the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the return of the Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, and the Brixton riots in 1981. She made her name as a reporter with ITN on the lunchtime news in the late 1970s, but her first stint as a newscaster came in March 1980 when she began alternating with Michael Nicholson as presenter on the "".