Time & Perspective Quote by Kate Adie

Refusing to speculate is an old reporter's flex, but Kate Adie delivers it with the clipped impatience of someone who has watched guessing turn lethal. The line is built on dismissal: "I don't sit there" conjures a posture of armchair punditry, the safely seated commentator who can afford theories because nothing is at stake. Adie separates herself from that tribe with a blunt identity claim - "I'm not that sort of person" - which is less personality trivia than professional creed. In war zones and breaking crises, speculation isn't just wrong; it's noise that crowds out verifiable detail.

The subtext is a rebuke to a media culture that increasingly rewards conjecture over confirmation. Adie came up in an era of broadcast authority where credibility was fragile and hard-won, and where the reporter's job was to be physically present, not rhetorically omnipresent. So the sentence becomes a boundary line: her value is in witness, not in vibes.

"It wastes time, actually" lands like an afterthought, but it's the moral payload. Time is the scarce resource in conflict reporting: time to check a fact, time to get out safely, time not to be manipulated by rumor, propaganda, or the adrenaline of a developing story. The "actually" adds a faintly scolding British realism, puncturing the glamor of "analysis" with the unsexy truth of the craft: disciplined restraint is what keeps the story honest.