Maggie Eales, who has died of cancer aged 67, made her way, in a 40-year career, from the secretarial pool at Independent Television News to become senior vice-president of the international broadcaster CNN.
She was part of the lifeblood of ITN during the heyday of News at Ten. Women in newsrooms, even women in management in news organisations, are commonplace today; but when Maggie began, they were not. Women were targets of sexism and discrimination. Her ascent from these circumstances to the pinnacle of global television news was remarkable.
When I joined ITN in 1976, Maggie was already assistant foreign editor. Extraordinarily caring, she managed a team of high-profile reporters and presenters, including Sandy Gall, Gerald Seymour, John Suchet, Trevor McDonald and Michael Brunson. It was she who ensured that our reports were right, and that they made it to air at all. By telex and phone, she would check our facts and the shape of our stories before managing the tricky transit of our films from obscure airports around the world to the processing labs and the newsroom in London. She would call our families at regular intervals to let them know that we were alive and safe. As the editor of ITN, Sir David Nicholas, recalled, the woman he always called Margaret and we called Maggie was, above all, “a people person”.
By 1982 Maggie had been appointed ITN’s senior foreign editor, the first woman to undertake the job. She led ITN’s coverage of the Falklands war, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela and the first Gulf war. These events secured News at Ten record audiences.
Ten years later, she left ITN and accepted the position of senior vice-president with CNN, based in London, a role in which she helped it develop into a global news brand. She vastly expanded the company’s base by signing up affiliates all over the world. Later she was responsible for sales of news stories, live broadcasting news, and overseeing a multimillion-dollar budget.
Maggie committed herself to developing the CNN Journalism Fellowship programme, devoting many extra hours to extending training, opportunities and support for correspondents and producers. The quality of her leadership was exemplified in the CNN MultiChoice African journalist of the year awards, in which she played a key role from 1998, shortly after they were instigated, until her retirement in 2013.
The managing director of CNN International, Tony Maddox, said: “Maggie possessed a unique combination of charm, drive, and market savvy. She understood how to use the power of the brand to benefit journalists doing challenging and important work around the world, especially in Africa.”
Maggie combined intelligence, nous and charm with a determination to give the best of herself and get the best out of everyone with whom she worked.
Born in Wimbledon to Ronald Eales, an engineer, and Joan Forward, she went to Wimbledon grammar school and gained a business studies degree at what is now Kingston University.
After a year in the US she joined ITN in 1969, becoming secretary to the editor.
She married Roger Hayes, a journalist with Reuters, in 1976. Their son, Nic, who now works for the Associated Press in London, was born in 1983. She described them both as “the centre of my universe”. My sense is that it was this secure base that rooted her capacity to give others so much support.
She is survived by Roger and Nic.
• Maggie Eales (Margaret Jean Hayes), born 23 January 1948; died 12 October 2015
