Journalist Kate Webb Dies at 64

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Published: 5/14/07, 7:25 AM EDT
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Kate Webb, a pioneering journalist whose powerful reputation was forged on the front lines of the Vietnam war and endured almost 35 years of reporting strife throughout Asia, has died, her family said. She was 64.

Webb, who once made the news instead of writing it in 1971 when she was captured in Cambodia and held prisoner by North Vietnamese troops, died from bowel cancer in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, her brother, Jeremy Webb, told The Associated Press on Monday.

"There wasn't a story that she ever covered poorly, but it was her war reporting that drove her and incidentally turned her into an icon of her generation," said Alan Dawson, a colleague of Webb's at news agency United Press International during the war years.

The New Zealand-born, Sydney-trained Webb first went to Vietnam in 1967 and spent more than six years covering the war for UPI, building a reputation for brave and honest reporting and insightful writing.

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[Ghost in the Machine]

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