In case you wondered where the quote comes from, it’s from Sir Har­old Evans’ memorial address for reporter David Blundy (1945−89). It’s worth read­ing in full:

Is journ­al­ism worth dying for? One of David Blundy’s friends and col­leagues asked the ques­tion when the tra­gic news came through. You could put it grandly: are truth and justice worth dying for? And, more bleakly, is a news­pa­per para­graph worth dying for?

It was, after all, a ran­dom bul­let that took David’s life when he was out in that El Sal­vador bar­rio. He was simply try­ing to top up a story he had already pre­pared for the Cor­res­pond­ent. He had done what he was paid to do. The last para­graph, we feel with poignancy, was not going to change a thing. No scoop or sub­tlety of his­tory hung upon it. It was a mor­tal redundancy.

And yet the unwrit­ten para­graph is among the many sens­it­ive trib­utes David’s true obit­u­ary. It rep­res­ents the cent­ral thread of his life. There was just a chance the mater­ial gathered for the last para­graph might affect the bal­ance of his story. To him, that was all that mattered. He was one of those report­ers who give what we call the free­dom of the press its moral energy. That moral energy is renewed whenever journ­al­ism enables people to make free, informed choices. It is des­troyed when it does not.

But this one redeem­ing jus­ti­fic­a­tion is the illu­min­a­tion in the shift­ing mosaic of news of fact and under­stand­ing that enables oth­ers to choose. ‘To make a pic­ture of real­ity,’ as Wal­ter Lippmann put it, ‘on which men can act.’

The whole of eth­ics is based on the pre­sump­tion of free will and the free­dom to make choices. David would mock the asser­tion that this is what he did, that he legit­im­ised and hon­oured his pro­fes­sion. But he was in the front line of truth not so much because he exposed him­self to danger as that he never ceased to expose him­self to doubt.

This is a risk that some of us go to great lengths to avoid. There is a com­fort in cer­tainty. In journ­al­ism it is sim­pler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more eleg­ant to pon­ti­fic­ate than it is to sweat. It is prudent to fol­low the office line. It is politic to take the handout. ‘Offi­cial sources’ say this and that … ‘Offi­cial sources’ most strongly deny … David always trav­elled light. His shoulder-slung green ruck­sack held barely a blade and a change of shirt. It was a meta­phor for his approach to being a for­eign correspondent.

His gift for com­edy has been well and rightly cel­eb­rated, but his ragged per­sona con­cealed a very ser­i­ous man. His val­ues were those of a human­it­arian lib­eral, but they were as open as his jacket. They had not ossi­fied into con­vic­tions. He car­ried them with him wherever he went. If he did reach a con­vic­tion on an assign­ment, he would com­monly bring it back like con­tra­band, unwrit­ten and undeclared, until he could put it to the test of a second and a third visit.

It is as well that he did not go abroad, as so many do, to dis­cover what he knew at home. The real­ity in all the places was either more subtle or more bru­tal than the ste­reo­types and the con­fid­ent com­mon­places of our polit­ical rhetoric.

He took risks. It was typ­ical of him to take the chance of switch­ing from the estab­lished Sunday Tele­graph to a new-born news­pa­per. His risk tak­ing was not bravado; it was his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the story on hand that so often bore him into danger. He used doubt as a tool of his craft. His nag­ging faux-naïf per­plex­ity acted like a truth serum on the resent­ments and sus­pi­cions of bor­der guard, guer­rilla and bur­eau­crat. Vul­ner­ab­il­ity was part of his appeal, but it was real enough when he came to set down what he had seen and heard close up.

Close up: as Robert Capa said of war pho­to­graphy, if your pic­tures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough. It is a test­a­ment to the integ­rity of David’s endeav­our that he hung his long frame over his port­able for so long at such ungodly hours, scowl­ing gloomily at his note­book. ‘Do you find a prob­lem,’ he said, ‘in get­ting the words in the right order? … What’s it all about?’

Writ­ing may be hard for every­one, but it’s easier to dazzle, shock and enter­tain than it is to get the words in the right order when you have set your­self in the rough urgent com­pres­sions of journ­al­ism to grapple with truth and get it read. Is my story accur­ate? Is it clear? Is it fair? Is it bor­ing? David nat­ur­ally doubted whether he met the tests he set him­self. But he did, in decept­ively simple prose. Some words he wrote for the Sunday Times from El Sal­vador in 1981 bear re-reading today:

‘Lol­ita Guardado was awoken at about 4am by a strange noise. There was the usual sound of per­sist­ent drizzle pour­ing from the roof of closely packed palm leaves and through the walls of mud and sticks. But out­side across the Sum­pul river she could hear men shout­ing. Groups of peas­ants gathered anxiously in the grey dawn to watch as Hon­duran sol­diers formed a line on the far bank and ran to and fro car­ry­ing stones from the river bed. Only later that day, after her fam­ily, friends and neigh­bours had been slaughtered, did she fully under­stand why they were there.’

Philip Lar­kin, in Church Going, wrote: ‘…someone will forever be sur­pris­ing a hun­ger in him­self to be more ser­i­ous.’ May we find that hun­ger in ourselves and in our ded­ic­a­tion when we remem­ber him with affec­tion and with gratitude.