Whenever people ask me why I left television news (a world which — I have to say — I loved) to run a J-School, I never give the real answer.
Because the real answer is just the name of someone they (and you) probably won’t ever have heard of: Richard Wild.
Richard is gone now. He was shot dead in Baghdad in 2003. I wrote the letter that got him in to Iraq. Continue reading
I suppose there are two periods of my father’s life. Before unemployment. And afterwards. Continue reading
CNN bills itself as the most trusted name in news. Director-General Mark Thompson reckons public trust is the life-blood of the BBC. Politicians and TV presenters wail and tear their clothes in public at the public’s loss of trust in the media. “Woe is us,” wails the collective cry from the journalism profession, “they don’t believe.”
Media organisations want to wallow in trust like hippos in mud. They want to roll in it until they’re covered from head to toe. When it dries up, thanks to dodgy editing on a royal documentary promo or phoney competitions, the mud cracks and it’s a “crisis”. Continue reading
It’s nearly two years since I wandered away
With the local battalion of the bold IRA,
For I read of our heroes, and wanted the same
To play out my part in the patriot game.I don’t mind a bit if I shoot down police
They are lackeys for war never guardians of peace
And yet at deserters I’m never let aim
The rebels who sold out the patriot game.The Patriot Game, Dominic Behan (1957)
In a way, the murder of the infidel, the first on British soil, foreshadowed what happened on 7/7. But it was strange, until I saw his dead body, it hadn’t clicked that we were putting ideas into people’s heads that would mean the murder of innocent people.
Ed Husain (2007)
Behan’s lyrics, from 1957, celebrate and romanticise an IRA attack that year on a police barracks in Northern Ireland. The song’s voice is that of Fergal O’Hanlon, who died in the raid. Just seven years later, the Clancy Brothers were singing it in New York’s Carnegie Hall.
The man who planned and led the action, Sean Garland, is in his seventies now. He’s wanted for extradition by U.S. law enforcement authorities investigating a counterfeiting ring. Today, half a century later, Behan’s song would probably be counted a glorification of terrorism, and therefore an offence under the 2006 Terrorism Act. But enough dewy-eyed nostalgia for the terrorism of bygone days. Continue reading
Ever wondered where the modern news media started? Germany, 1450s — Johann Gutenberg invents movable type printing and brings out the Bible. Problem with the Bible? You only buy it once.
New translations keep presses rolling. They also raise political problems (like Tyndale’s translation in England). Readers can use their Bible to make up their own minds on issues previously interpreted for them by the Church. Continue reading
I think that the networks, they are fed up with the massive bombs. They don’t want to see things going bang anymore. What troubles me is that — what troubles me most personally, is when I see children hurt — and those are the stories that you really want to get on the air and it really bothers me that we can’t. Allen Pizzey, CBS News, March 2007
Four years ago I was talking to a tired but exuberant David Bloom. He was on the move with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, sitting atop a specially adapted M88 Medium Recovery Vehicle with a gyro-stabilized camera that linked back to a mobile satellite truck. It was the future of war coverage. “Leaning back from the fixed camera like a sailboat skipper readying for a turn,” the NBC correspondent communicated tension, exhilaration and boredom – the rush and frustrations of an armoured charge. Continue reading