Jane Dutton

Jane Dutton's picture
Jane Dutton
Senior News Presenter | Qatar
Biography

Jane Dutton is a Senior News Presenter with extensive experience of international news, both in-studio and on location.

Latest posts by Jane Dutton

By Jane Dutton in Americas on March 6th, 2011
Photo by Getty

"I log onto Al Jazeera every morning - you guys rock!" This was no news junkie; this was Christopher, a fantastic salesman at a clothes store in central Washington. He tells me Al Jazeera is the first thing he reads on his Blackberry, and it is his first source for news. He loves us. And so do all his friends.

What a change from when I came here three years ago! Back then virtually nobody had heard of us. Out of those who did, one tried to bomb our offices several years ago. George W Bush and his gang suspected we were propagators of anti-American propaganda. And the other, a taxi driver, said: "You were them guys Bush tried to take out; I know about you!" He was dead impressed there was a representative of a 'terror network' in his cab.

By Jane Dutton in Middle East on February 5th, 2011

Evacuated from central Cairo by the military, and driven to a 5-star hotel with my bags on top of an army tank, was the climax to an extraordinary and surreal fortnight.

It started back in Doha when I was stopped from getting onto two planes: visa issues that played out all the way to the immigration office in Egypt.

I was eventually given an entry stamp with a warning not to turn up again with a blank page in my passport.

I’m glad I made it. I was witness to a week that will change Egypt forever.

Tags: Egypt, Mubarak
By Jane Dutton in Africa on June 14th, 2010
Photo by Reuters

The wind is blowing hard in Soweto today and so too are the vuvuzelas.

Stall traders around Hector Pieterson's memorial have added the controversial trumpets to their sales repertoire along with traditional clothes, African drums and bangles.

Hector was shot on the 16th of June 1976 during the Soweto riots. The picture of him being carried by his friend as he was dying at the painfully young age of 13 is the iconic image of one of South Africa's bloodiest moments.

I was just a girl when police opened fire on school children protesting against the government's decision to teach black students in Afrikaans. And the world turned on my country in horror. The drawn-out moves to end Apartheid gathered pace.

By Jane Dutton in Africa on June 7th, 2010
Fans cheering in Moruleng. (AFP)

What an amazing vibe. My city, Johannesburg, festooned in a blaze of colour; flags on cars, around cars, on people’s heads, flag sellers painted as African masks.

South Africa is full of national pride.

It's an unusual sensation for this country of mine that is consumed with rampant crime, spiraling corruption, Jacob Zuma’s seemingly endless brood of children, potholes and electricity blackouts suddenly obsessing with placing flags on their cars like diplomats, debating the pros and cons of the noisy vavuzela trumpet, (as I write this I can hear one blaring, tunelessly in the background) unrealistically positive about the home-team Bafana Bafana’s success, hooting their horns, laughing, everyone smiling!

Even verkrampte tannies (conservative ladies) are seen wearing football shirts of the mainly black national team. It’s the World Cup - the very first one on African soil.

And the mood is contagious.

Al Jazeera Live

Biography

Jane Dutton's picture
Jane Dutton
Senior News Presenter
Jane Dutton is a Senior News Presenter with extensive experience of international news, both in-studio and on location.

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