Career
Ford worked as a teacher for four years, including teaching IRA provisionals at the H-Blocks at Long Kesh for two years. She was later an Open University social studies tutor in Belfast for two years. Ford was thirty by the time she joined Granada Television as a researcher in 1974, being told she was too old to be a newsreader. She joined the BBC in 1976, and worked on Tomorrow's World in 1977.
In 1978 Ford moved to ITN but in 1981 she left to help launch TV-am. However fierce competition from the BBC's casually styled Breakfast Time resulted in a relaunch which was perceived as "dumbing-down" of the station, and only three months after the station's launch, Ford was dismissed from the presenting team. Ford was involved in an incident at a party in which she threw her wine over Jonathan Aitken to express her outrage over his involvement in her sacking from the channel.
Ford rejoined the BBC in 1986, becoming part of the presentation team for both BBC One's Six O'Clock News and the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in 1989. From 1999, she fronted the re-launched lunchtime One O'Clock News.
In 1996, Ford was accused of bias when hosting a discussion on treatment of men during divorce cases on Today programme. The three-minute discussion featured feminist barrister Elizabeth Woodcraft and Neil Lyndon, a critic of feminism, with Ford allowing Woodcraft to speak for more than two minutes of the three-minute feature. Lyndon received an apology for his treatment on the programme and Ford, herself a feminist, was reprimanded by Rod Liddle, then the programme's editor.
On 30 October 2005, Ford announced her plans to retire from broadcasting in April 2006 in order to pursue other interests while she "still has the interest and energy". She also talked about ageism, stating:
I might have been shovelled off into News 24 to the sort of graveyard shift, and I wouldn't have wanted to do that because it wouldn't have interested me. I think when you reflect on the people who they're (the BBC) bringing in and they're all much younger. I think they are being brought in because they are younger. I think that's specifically one of the reasons why they're being employed."On 27 April 2006, she said farewell to the viewers and signed off by introducing a compilation of clips of her career. On 2 May 2006, J Sainsbury plc, the UK supermarket group, announced Ford was joining the company as a non-executive director. She is the Chair of Sainsbury's board's Corporate Responsibility Committee.
Read more about this topic: Anna Ford
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