{"id":1073,"date":"2008-07-04T19:48:36","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T18:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1073"},"modified":"2008-07-04T20:28:45","modified_gmt":"2008-07-04T19:28:45","slug":"charles-wheeler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/07\/charles-wheeler\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Wheeler"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he Telegraph<\/a> can’t help getting a sneering dig into broadcasting even as it remembers Charles Wheeler<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Sir Charles Wheeler, the BBC foreign correspondent who has died aged 85, was the last working member of the stylish post-war school of television reporting and was one of the few British television journalists to whom the term distinguished could properly be applied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wheeler<\/a> inspired Martin Bell<\/strong>, Stewart Purvis<\/strong>, Gavin Esler<\/strong> and probably anybody who loved broadcasting and ever watched him report.<\/p>\n

My own favourite Wheeler moment was him talking to some American voters in a bar in the perfectly named town of Lost Nation<\/a>, during the Iowa primaries. The voters voiced their whines and political platitudes.<\/p>\n

“If the primaries didn’t happen here,” grumbled one, “nobody would care what we thought.”<\/p>\n

Wheeler nursed a cigarette, before looking the man in the eye. <\/p>\n

“No,” he said, “they probably wouldn’t.” <\/p>\n

The timing and response, perfect. Like all great artists, he reserved the real steel for himself.<\/p>\n

He was, of course, the antithesis of impartial BBC<\/strong> journalism. He editorialised. He wasn’t afraid to take sides. Of course, foreign affairs reporting is a more forgiving arena than British politics, as John Simpson, Justin Webb and Matt Frei can all attest.<\/p>\n

It worked for me, but then people who think that sympathy for the weak amounts to liberal bias probably would probably disagree.<\/p>\n

Important, too, that he carried on working right up to his death in his 80s. He did some fantastic radio documentaries in recent years, keeping alive issues like war reparations.<\/p>\n

Wheeler’s life is a reminder to editors and managers to stick with the difficult but talented. It’s a tribute to the byzantine workings of the BBC that it managed to keep on finding a home for his work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph can’t help getting a sneering dig into broadcasting even as it remembers Charles Wheeler: Sir Charles Wheeler, the BBC foreign correspondent who has died aged 85, was the last working member of the stylish post-war school of television reporting and was one of the few British television journalists to whom the term distinguished […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15,1592,1594,1516,1593],"class_list":["post-1073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-bbc","tag-charles-wheeler","tag-gavin-esler","tag-martin-bell","tag-stewart-purvis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}