Susan Osman is a British journalist known for her work with

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

, ITV and

China Radio International China Radio International (CRI) is the state-owned international radio broadcaster of China. It is currently headquartered in Babaoshan, Shijingshan, Beijing. It was founded on December 3, 1941, as Radio Peking. It later adopted the pinyin fo ...

. Osman was a theatre director in

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

, and also worked in that capacity in

Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

. She began her television career in 1983 at

HTV West ITV Wales and West, previously known as Harlech Television (HTV), was an ITV (TV network), ITV franchisee in the United Kingdom until 31 December 2013, licensed to broadcast by the regulator Ofcom. There is no channel, past or present, named " ...

. She also worked as an investigative reporter for

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

's consumer affairs programme '' 4 What It's Worth'', as well as at

BBC East BBC East is one of BBC's English Regions covering Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and parts of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire (including the City of Milton Keynes). It is headquartered in The Forum ...

. She first joined

BBC West BBC West is one of the BBC's English Regions serving Bristol, Somerset, the majority of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire and north of Dorset. Services Television BBC West's television service (broadcast on BBC One) consists of the flagship regio ...

in 1991. She presented the current affairs programme ''Close Up West'', and also hosted her own radio programme, ''Radio Bristol's Morning Show''. She also hosted the program '' Points West'' until leaving that position in 2005. She continued doing freelance work for the network until 2009. Osman left her position at the BBC in December 2009, citing rampant age-discrimination against women in broadcasting. She stated that women in broadcasting have a "sell-by date", and that every time she mentions her age, she worries about ending her career. She stated that she even had a manager ask if she was

menopausal Menopause, also known as the climacteric, is the time when menstrual periods permanently stop, marking the end of the reproductive stage for the female human. It typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55, although the exact timing can ...

. Because of this, Osman felt she had no future in the United Kingdom. The BBC denied the allegations of ageism. Osman accepted a job at

in 2009, largely to allow herself to continue advancing in her career. She praised Chinese culture's respect for older persons and took a position as the host of the English-language talk show ''The Beijing Hour''. She has faced some difficulties from the Chinese government's insistence on censorship. The private lives of leaders, the Tiananmen Square protests and

Falun Gong Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a new religious movement founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. Falun Gong has its global headquarters in Dragon Springs, a compound in Deerpark, New York, United States, near t ...

are off-limits to her show, as well as a variety of smaller issues that are censored at times. Osman has set up film companies called Nick O’Time Films, and Osman Films, along with her writing partner Rowena Goldman. She is also working on a book that will be called ''Flirting with the Dragon – Why We Misunderstand China.''

References

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Osman, Susan BBC newsreaders and journalists BBC World News Year of birth missing (living people) Living people