Husband backs war reporter

Ms Crawford, whose highly commended reporting from Libya has made her something of a star, bridles at being labelled “a female reporter”, Richard Edmondson said.

Also guaranteed to make her angry is the suggestion “she does not care much about her children”, he said.

“Tell her that a woman journalist should not be going to war zones, especially when there are kids back home to cuddle,” he wrote in The Independent. “It would be a swifter end than strychnine.”

Ms Crawford told the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival that “it’s frankly really insulting and very, very sexist” when people tell her she should not be doing the job she does.

Speaking by satellite link, she said: “I’m working alongside today the chief correspondent who’s a man who’s got three children and there will be no-one who says ‘what do you think you’re doing, how awful, what are you doing to your children?’”