Nick Owen interviewed Stewart Purvis last night, with Stewart talking through some of his favourite pieces from a career that spans over thirty years in journalism. It isn’t putting it too strongly to say that Purvis is the single most influential British TV journalist of that time (not that he’s in pipe and slippers — he’s busy at work at Ofcom).
Charles Wheeler reporting on the L.A. riots kicked it off. Wheeler had been the inspiration for a off-camera career that saw Purvis produce Royal documentaries and build Channel 4 News as an intelligent alternative to mainstream bulletins.
There were some great moments. The young Purvis as the only journalist with a camera to track down, and doorstep, the leader of British political party who had just been charged with conspiring to murder his gay lover. And yet agonisingly unable to come up with a question.
Years later, finding himself in front of John Paul II, Purvis made no mistake. His Holiness got two direct questions and produced two direct answers before the Italian cameraman filming the encounter lowered his camera and knelt for a blessing.
In the 1980s the small ENG cameras of ITN replaced the unwieldy OB units of Thames. Events became news events.
And Purvis produced them: the Pope’s tour of Britain, Charles and Diana’s wedding, and the return of the Falklands fleet.
Purvis reflected on the triumphalism of that broadcast arrival and the contrast with the mood he had observed in the quiet, sombre streets that night — a mood the cameras hadn’t captured, and perhaps never could.
There were reflections too on Penny Marshall and Ian Williams reporting from Omarska. And on the deaths of colleagues in Iraq.
If it sounds like there weren’t many laughs, you’d be wrong. It was a reflective account of a career that spanned key moments in recent British history.
For me too, it reflected the rise and fall of television news as the pre-eminent journalistic medium.